Facing up to Afghanistan's poppy problem
Blogged by: Nina Brenjo
Men work in an opium poppy field in Afghanistan's eastern province Ningarhar.
The United States is now realising that the opium trade in Afghanistan is a serious obstacle to progress, but it may already be too late to eradicate the problem any time soon, according to the New York Times .
The drugs money has helped revive the Taliban and production has flourished in areas where the guerrillas have the upper hand. Helmand is one such province where there's so much opium that blocks of it are used as local currency.
Until recently, Washington has considered fighting drugs "a distraction from fighting terrorists", according to the paper, which cites American officials. Not any more.
"Now people recognize that it's all related ... It's no longer just a drug problem. It is an economic problem, a political problem and a security problem," Thomas Schweich, State Department coordinator for counter narcotics in Afghanistan, is quoted as saying.
The number of people working in Afghanistan's poppy fields last year reached over 2 million, according to the U.N. Helmand province even has guest workers from Pakistan, the U.N. news agency IRIN reports. One of the reasons may be higher pay for field workers than in other poppy growing regions, due to increased levels of fighting.
So, what stands in the way of solving the problem?
One of the reasons the paper cites is disagreement between the U.S. State Department and the Pentagon - the country's civil and military leadership - over priorities in Afghanistan. The Pentagon does not think it is its job to fight drugs.
Then there is corruption within Afghan government ranks. "I would go out to an eradication site, and we would be driven past miles and miles of poppy fields, and the Afghans would say, 'You can't do that field,' because it belongs to such and such a commander, 'You can't do that field, you can't do this field,' " the paper quotes an unnamed American counter-narcotics official as saying.
Another problem is the basic skills of Afghan drug prosecutors. "You look at the indictments, and it looks like a sixth grader wrote it," Rob Lunnen, a U.S. federal prosecutor assisting the Afghan drug task force tells the paper.
The current Afghan administration doesn't help with its reluctance adequately to support the Afghan drug task force, as it views it as a "creation of the West". And the U.S. is not coming up with any extensive aid and employment programmes that would potentially discourage farmers from growing poppy plants.
So far, the only permitted method of manual eradication has removed a meagre 20,000 acres of poppy plants, out of the total 407,000, according to United Nations.
It sounds very discouraging for anyone hoping that the problem will be solved quickly. Indeed, as Vincent Balbo, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) chief in Kabul, points out:
"This is going to take 20 or 30 years. The DEA has been in Thailand for 40 years. Here, we're in year two."
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5 responses to “Facing up to Afghanistan's poppy problem”
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24 May 2007 21:41:33 GMT
SInce we have identified the poppy fields and their locations, why can't they be erradicated with herbicides???? How about burned??????? Drastic action needs to be taken if we seriously want to win this War on Terrorism.
27 May 2007 11:22:43 GMT
All the discussion in the world does not seem to address why there is a poppy problem at all-the end users. When citizens in the West, primarily Europe and the USA, decide to get off and say off drugs then such a story as this will go away. I wonder of the users in the world today how many care that when they get off of the poppy that opriginated in Afghanistan, that they realize that they are supporting the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and acting sacreligiously against the victims of 9/11 and other terrorists acts-not to mention hurting the decent citizens of Aghanistan, who may be trying to move forward.
27 May 2007 11:24:02 GMT
The poppy business is the economic driver of the economy, The transition to another crop which would be far less profitable for the farmers is unlikely to happen anytime soon.. The one solution I have seen proposed that would get the opium off the world market is we buy it ourselves ..After all the west has spent billions so far on ' the war on terror' in this country .. What we have is a failed state .. The place was one of the poorest places in the world in the 70's than blown apart by war against the Russians. There the tribe is everything .. overlaided by religious dogma , superstition , illiteracy .. What is an extra billion to buy up the raw opium and use it for morphine .. way cheaper than having it on the streets of Zurich, London New York or Paris etc. will this happen ? No , the powers that have been fighting the war on drugs [ funny how it goes on and on with never a victory - is there a message there ? ] would not allow it .. We can't do that .. terrible idea.. So plan on having this mess called Afghanistan carry on for years to come..
29 May 2007 11:59:42 GMT
For those who wonder, in terms of recent history, how America and Britain got mucked up in Afghanistan I invite all to read "Charlie Wilson's War." You see, Charlie Wilson was a southern Democrat congressman from a backwater Texas district, who became pointsman for the CIA in order to get Stinger shoulder launched missles into Afghanistan to down Soviet helicopters. Wilson was a handsome, personable "good ol' boy" who got the Pakistanis to collude with the U.S. via the instrumentality of an attractive (are you ready?) female cadre-member of the John Birch Society. So is that so bad? Got the Soviets out of Afghanistan and on the way to end Stalinist-type rule in Russia and the USSR to today's CIS. The Russians and then the Taliban did better at eradication, eradication-wise.
24 Jun 2007 10:35:27 GMT
As comments 2 and 3 imply, this is a very complex problem.
First, as Joey points out, to frame it as âAfghanistanâs problemâ is rather missing the point. Focusing on the supply while ignoring the demand is not the most intelligent way forward. It is not internal demand that makes poppy growing such a profitable exercise. Secondly from a livelihoods and development perspective this situation is unique. We are trying to persuade farmers making, on the whole, a good standard of living from growing poppies to change production to something less profitable. It seems unlikely that many will be persuaded by arguments of the general good. Thirdly, the simplistic solution hat it can simply be eradicated misses the ramifications. Assuming even that this is possible, what does John imagine would be the impact of destroying overnight the living of significant numbers of people? Who would these people turn to for support? How would it help fight a war that, we are constantly reminded, is about values? There has been support for R Nordmanâs suggestion of simply buying the crop, using some for medical purposes and, perhaps, simply destroying the rest. This would require a higher degree of western political sophistication that we are use to seeing. Another âsolutionâ would be to legalise the drugs trade and tax both supply and demand. Again, it is western political imperatives which present this from happening. Please let us not pretend that this is Afghanistanâs problem alone. Any part solution requires a significantly more imaginative approach from the west and a recognition that the problem is manifest in New York, London, Bonn, Tehran etc as well as Kabul.