Farmer Mohammed Agha squats on his haunches in the dust near his wheat fields and dreams of growing opium again, so that he can do more than just scrape by. "If it continues like this, God willing we'll grow poppy again. Nothing they promised has come true. We have no clinics, no roads and the local commanders are getting richer by the day," says Agha, sitting outside the local shop which sells shampoo by the sachet because villagers are too poor to afford a bottle.
Agha is one of thousands of farmers in Afghanistan's eastern Nangahar province who have planted wheat, okra and sugar cane instead of opium this year -- and found it less far less lucrative than their previous crop.
Several thousand protesters took to the streets of the provincial capital Jalalabad last month, torching United Nations and foreign aid organisations' offices in a wave of nation-wide anti-US protests in which at least 15 people were killed. The protests were triggered by allegations that US military investigators at Guantanamo Bay desecrated a Koran, but an order by local authorities that villagers stop growing poppy added fuel to the fire.
Provincial governor Haji Din Mohammed estimates poppy cultivation is down by 95 percent in the province and foreigners working on alternative livelihoods for opium farmers say poppy cultivation has dropped by three-quarters.
"It's down by 75 percent in both Nangahar and Laghman provinces. You can only see opium in the foothills now," says Leo Brandenberg, team leader at the German Technical Co-operation's (GTZ) project for alternative livelihoods.
Aid workers believe that farmers did not voluntarily decide not to plant opium but were ordered to do so by gunwielding local commanders, to whom they are often already in debt.
"It is increasing the debts of small farmers and raising the incomes of middle-men and richer farmers. It puts more money in the hands of criminals and strengthens their hold on the economy," says Brandenberg's colleague at GTZ, Heimo Posamentier.
The Afghan government is under pressure from the West to show immediate results in the battle against drugs, with a leaked US memo appearing in the New York Times ahead of President Karzai's trip to Washington last month accusing him of being too soft on drugs.
Ahead of Sunday's International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, Karzai has pointed to the drop in opium cultivation in some of the main growing areas such as Nangahar as a success and is expecting a 30 percent fall in national poppy cultivation this year.
But even with that reduction, Afghanistan will remain the world's largest producer of opium and the UN and US State Department have warned that the country is teetering on the brink of becoming a narco-state. Short-term successes in opium reduction may, however, be storing up problems for later. Experts say eradication programs and orders by tribal elders that farmers stop growing poppy impoverishes the poorest of the poor, reinforces the position of local gunlords involved in the trade and does little to address the broader economic measures needed to solve the problem.
"Farmers are the weakest links in the chain and poverty renders them vulnerable. Eradication can be counterproductive if there are no economic alternatives available to farmers," Antonio Maria Costa, head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, said on a recent visit to Kabul.
Providing economic alternatives is hard -- farmers can make up to 10 times more from growing opium than wheat or rice and unlike vegetables opium is durable and travels well.
Wiping out opium cultivation in Thailand took 25 years and the country had roads, power and an economic infrastructure which Afghanistan lacks.
"Afghanistan's economy is not even in first gear. A lot of the economic boom you see in urban areas is a result of ill-gotten gains, and there is no parallel in the countryside," says GTZ's Brandenberg.
In Kama district, local farmers say there is no work off the land and, other than the food they eat, all their clothes, farm tools and consumer goods are imported from outside.
"Everything I am wearing from my turban to my shoes is imported. With no work how long can we be expected not to plant opium?" says 45-year-old Haji Mohammed Nasir.
They are resentful that they have seen very little tangible benefit in return for stopping growing opium and their goodwill for the government's drive to stamp out the drug is evaporating. "The government promises roads, schools and hospitals and seeds for alternative livelihoods but they haven't kept those promises. People can wait, but they can't wait forever," says 59-year-old Haji Mustafa.
Comments
Comments are closed.