Despite a decrease in the area under poppy cultivation, gains in this area are likely to be off-set for a number of reasons, the most fundamental one being the links of powerful individuals to drug trafficking.
Despite a decrease in the area under poppy cultivation, gains in this area are likely to be off-set for a number of reasons, the most fundamental one being the links of powerful individuals to drug trafficking.
Last week the spokesman of the Ministry of Counter Narcotics alleged that NATO Coalition forces and local government officials in Kandahar were preventing the officials of the Ministry of Counternarcotics from destroying the existing poppy crops in the area. The charges are serious, coming as they do ahead of the Kandahar offensive, which is also targeted to break the nexus of drug traffickers with insurgents.
There have been earlier reports in a section of the media hinting at the involvement of international forces with drug trafficking though these have never been substantiated. Equally, powerful political figures have come under scrutiny, with the western media in particular, zeroing in on the leader of the provincial council of Kandahar, Ahmed Wali Karzai, who is the brother of President Hamid Karzai. These allegations too have been oft-repeated but no concrete evidence has been forthcoming.
The area under opium poppy cultivation fell last year by 22 percent, to 123,000 hectares, or about 304,000 acres. The number of poppy free provinces also increased from 18 to 20. The decrease in the area under poppy cultivation was for the second consecutive year and helped push 300,000 farmers out of poppy cultivation. Much of the decline was in Helmand province, but Helmand still accounts for nearly 60 percent of all opium grown in Afghanistan.
Although the area under opium cultivation declined sharply, farmers were able to extract more opium per poppy bulb. Officials of the UNODC have also cautioned that the decrease in cultivation was due to a drop in the price of the crop due to oversupply in the past. They cautioned that the trends could be reversed if steps were not taken to consolidate the gains. They also pointed to possible dangers of stockpiling. They especially pointed to poppy free provinces in the North which were suffering from economic neglect.
However opium cultivation continues in the Helmand and Kandahar provinces despite a major influx of international forces and the expenditure of billions of dollars. The Ministry of Counter Narcotics and the Directorate of Counter Narcotics in the Ministry of Interior have also not been able to change the situation significantly. Afghanistan is still producing and supplying approximately 92 percent of the world’s opium and the easy access to drugs is increasing drug addiction not only around the world but also within the country.
Officials in the Ministry of Counter-narcotics also point to the easy access to precursor chemicals for the processing of raw opium into heroin. “Though opium is currently being cultivated in the country, most of the raw materials to produce heroin are imported from other countries”, the officials say.
The production of heroin from opium stocks in-country greatly facilitates traffickers who have to now cross the borders with small quantities of refined drugs rather than large amounts of the raw material and thus easily escape detection. Counter-narcotics Ministry officials say the chemicals are brought in illegally under the guise of being used in the manufacture of medicines but are then misused for the manufacture of heroin.
“The global community must stop importing raw materials to produce heroin inside the country and cooperate with the Afghan government as well,” they said. According to the Afghan officials, these raw materials are being imported inside the country from France, Germany, in addition to the neighboring countries.
The Taliban meanwhile are reaping the benefits of this drug trade. According to the UNODC (the UN agency fighting against drugs and crime), Taliban are funding their insurgency through the profits earned from drug trafficking.
Efforts to eradicate the crop have been also less than successful because of the dependency of farmers on this crop. A crop disease which is killing the poppy crop in some parts of the country is being viewed by farmers as a plot by the Coalition Forces to eradicate the crop through chemical spraying, even though the UNODC has confirmed that it is a natural crop disease.
The outlook for eradication of poppy and controlling drug trafficking therefore does not appear to be very positive, especially in view of the powerful interested involved. The unanswered question before Afghans today is: who will bell the cat?
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