Development programmes in Afghanistan

The international community in the Afghani Counter Narcotics Directorate is impatient for results when experience from Thailand and Pakistan teaches us that crop substitution in opium producing areas can only be achieved gradually. Success depends entirely on providing farmers and communities with an alternative livelihood, as two examples from Afghanistan illustrate. At times ambitious local commanders embark on vigorous eradication campaigns with dramatic short term success, similar to the Taliban campaign in 2001. These eye catching operations store up trouble for the future as farmers redouble their opium cultivation to pay off debts. Such failures are then blamed on the lack of commitment by the international community or the insurgents.

In 2004/05 opium poppy cultivation was significantly reduced in the province of Nangarhar, owing to the sequencing of interventions, with alternative development support preceding eradication efforts. Farmers had an opportunity to plant other crops and could benefit from improved security and the functioning of the market. At the same time a sharp rise in the cost of labour made opium, which at harvest time is labour intensive, less attractive than high value vegetables, such as onion and potato. Rising prosperity across the region resulted in the recovery of livestock markets which in turn aided the balance in cropping patterns and a shift towards wheat and fodder crops. For the first time in these areas vegetable traders begun to offer many of the services provided by the opium trade, including cash  advances, purchasing at the farmgate and absorbing transportation and transaction cost.

 Yet in more remote districts, where few of these conditions obtained, there was a resurgence of poppy cultivation in 2007. Many households had to sell off long-term productive assets, migrate and borrow to sustain themselves. They were determined to replant poppy and would resist any attempts to destroy their crop. Over a three year cycle, therefore, the reduction proved unsustainable, even though many farmers had been diverted from opium to other crops. The importance of finding an alternative income is further underlined from the example of Balkh in the Northeast of the country bordering Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. In 2005 some 7,300 acres were cleared of opium poppy and US$ 12 million provided in development aid. The vigorous efforts by government to eradicate did dissuade farmers from replanting in the following season. Moreover, government services including functioning markets provided a range of benefits. Most importantly, however, farmers found a new cash crop with equally attractive returns – cannabis.

Cannabis, which is processed into hashish and has been used recreationally and for medical purposes for millennia, is less expensive per weight than opium or heroin. But it yields twice the quantity of drug per acre and is cheaper and less labour intensive to grow. Consequently, cultivation has risen by an estimated 40% across the country with some 173,000 ha now under cultivation. The government invests comparably little effort in cannabis eradication, and in the province of Balkh, including the provincial capital of Mazar-i-Sharif, it is sold quite openly. Black, oily and with a pungent smell the ‘milk of mazar’ used to be prized by cannabis smokers around the world. Now that farmers have moved away from poppy and traders are reactivating ancient trade routes it is becoming available on global markets once again, another unintended consequence of the war on opium poppy.

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