The costs of opium poppy cultivation

For centuries opium poppy has been cultivated in Afghanistan principally for medical and recreational purposes. Two facts have changed the status this crop significantly: the massive demand for recreational heroin abroad and increasingly at home, and the prohibition of production.  The rising demand on the one hand, and the illegality of production on the other has created chronic insecurity for the producers and a wide opportunity for criminal organisations, corrupt officials and militant opponents of the government. Poor farming families, who receive none of the benefits of government in terms of services, welfare provisions, the basic security to even guarantee functioning markets, are caught in the middle.

The Afghani government emphasises its drug control efforts in terms of both eradication campaigns against opium poppy farmers and the arrests of heroin traffickers. But in the country side, the destruction of farms is perceived as deeply corrupt, and mainly an opportunity by local commanders to bring the land of poor farmers under their control and eliminate the competition. In Kabul, where a drugs court was created in the summer of 2005, some 2000 people have been sentenced over the past two years to often lengthy prison terms on the basis of dubious evidence. Police officers are openly accused of corrupt practices, and work of the court is widely decried as serving a symbolic function. Significantly, all defendants are drug users, peddlers and couriers, and not a single drug baron has as yet been convicted.

In 2005 there were an estimated 15,000 opium traders in the country and some 250 high level traffickers. They control production via the so called salaam system, whereby they provide farmers with credit for seeds, fertilizer and staples in return for a fixed amount of the opium harvest at a price fixed in advance and well below market prices at harvest times. Where farmers fail to deliver the debt may be converted from opium into cash at prevailing prices. The risks for farmers are illustrated by one farmer who received an advance payment of US$450 in December 2000, which had been converted from opium to cash and back again several times until in April 2003, he owed his lender 50kgs of opium.  Caught in the incessant rounds of fighting, preyed on by corrupt officials, harried by bandits, and with no support to speak of, farmers have little alternative but to accept extortionate conditions from money lenders. Livestock, household items, carpets and jewellery are pawned off, land is mortgaged, then sold, and as a last resort, daughters as young as eight years old are given in marriage to money lenders.

Eradication campaigns outside the context of rural development leave farmers with little alternative but to drive up their opium production in the following year. Ambitious local commanders and regional politicians may succeed in driving down production by employing violent measures in a given area. Inevitably, poppy cultivation bounces back the following season, as farmers work all the harder to work off the debts they have incurred in consequence. In the process, poor farmers rely ever more on unremunerated labour. Their children therefore miss out on education, with consequences for overall productivity not just for the family but the national economy in the long term.

This increasing focus on short term returns also stresses the natural resources. Land that should be left to lie fallow is worked for falling yields year after year. More precarious still is the water distribution. While large parts of the country are desert, Afghanistan boast many underground aquifers. In many areas the exploitation of these via complex irrigation systems is regulated by carefully crafted traditions. Against the general erosion of law and order, these arrangements are no longer being honoured and disputes over opium cultivation, which is illegal, cannot be settled within a legal framework. A mutually reinforcing spiral of conflict is at work, where water sharing agreements are broken, leading to disputes which can only be settled by violence, eventuating in an even more aggressive exploitation of these scarce resources.

For many rural communities the Taliban insurgents who are now claim to protect opium growers are becoming increasingly attractive. In the province of Nargahar eradication had achieved reduction over 2004-06, but by 2007 members of several Pashtun tribes were protesting against sustaining low production levels. Farmers are now turning to anti government insurgents for support, which has resulted in a rise in attacks on government forces, the inflow of armed groups, and consequently an increase in criminality.

Once farmers lose their land, they flock to the cities, where families often break up. They join the legion of displaced people, many traumatised by violence and the loss of loved ones, for whom heroin is a cheap and increasingly available painkiller. With an estimated population of 200,000 opiate users, the handful of treatment services and drop in centres run by charities and NGOs are overburdened. Working already with wholly inadequate resources, they also have to contend with a violent, often corrupt police who treats addicts as criminals not patients. This encourages dangerous drug use habits, particularly needle sharing, which in turn leads to the spread of blood borne viruses, like HIV and Hepatitis B&C.

At political level there is much concern over the international reputation Afghanistan has earned as the cradle of the global opium supply and by becoming a narco state. While many politicians emphatically reject this epithet, pointing to the strident efforts that are being made and rising numbers of seizures and convictions, it is becoming increasingly clear that many officials at all levels of government are implicated in the heroin trade. It is hardly surprising that in the country identified by Transparency International as the most corrupt in the world, opportunities for drug related graft should be taken. Given the prominence of opium/heroin in the economy, accounting for a significant proportion of national wealth, and the fastest venue for capital accumulation, many power brokers can hardly afford to stay away from it. At the same time, the government is so dependent on international support that it cannot deviate from its course and has to continue with eradication and arrest. Yet, with prevailing conditions precluding the growth of economic alternatives, the main effect will be to continue to impoverish farmers, to undermine the legitimacy of the state and play into the hands of the insurgents.

 Short version