Opium in Afghanistan: A bad trip

[Bigmac]

         Below is an excellent article on the opium issue in Afghanistan. They provide a very good overview of how the opium production finances Taliban activity and how farmers have no choice but to grow poppies. They give good ideas on how to lessen or stop the opium production in the country but like most ideas you have to convince others to go along with them.

Opium in Afghanistan: A bad trip

By Hayder Mili and Jacob Townsend

The opium economy in Afghanistan is a key component of the counterinsurgency campaign, yet remains one of the most difficult issues to tackle. It is a critical problem facing international efforts to create a functional government in Kabul that can prosecute counter-terrorism on its own territory.

A successful counter-narcotics intervention would have the added benefit of undermining an important terrorist funding source in arenas as diverse as Chechnya, Xinjiang and Central Asia.

While coalition and Afghan officials regularly acknowledge the power that the narco-economy has over their ambitions, it has proved exceptionally challenging to turn this into a national strategy that incorporates counter-narcotics into counterinsurgency and provides the resources for its execution. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), opium production had a boom year in 2006, rising to 6,100 tonnes.

This marked a 49% increase over 2005, yielding an estimated US$755 million to farmers on the basis of a slightly decreased farm-gate price of $125 per kilogram of dry opium. With the national government's revenues at less than $350 million for 2006, the opium economy is a formidable financial power base beyond the state's control. Good weather conditions are expected in 2007, suggesting another huge harvest.

Any national counter-narcotics strategy for Afghanistan must begin with a preface noting the geographical variations of the country. In 2006, the southern province of Helmand accounted for 46% of Afghanistan's opium production. To the east of Helmand, Kandahar produced 8%. In other words, the majority of Afghanistan's opium economy is built on production in two southern provinces. Of the remainder, 25% is produced in the northern belt close to the borders with Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, with lighter concentrations in the eastern and western provinces.

Based on the UNODC's observations of recent opium planting, southern pre-eminence is likely to intensify further in 2007. [1] The distribution of production correlates strongly with areas of ongoing insurgency/terrorism and coalition fatalities. Using the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's divisions of Afghanistan, Regional Command South, which includes Helmand and Kandahar provinces, is where 62% of the country's opium is produced and where the coalition has suffered close to two-thirds of its combat deaths. [2] Basically, people are dying where poppies are thriving.

The difference between the relatively calm north and west and the militarized south and east should be reflected in approaches to counter-narcotics. Opium is undoubtedly a governance problem across the country. In the south and east, however, it is also strongly related to the Kabul government's most immediate existential threat - the Taliban-led insurgency - as well as to the funding of 139 suicide attacks in 2006. [3]

more on link: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/IE18Df05.html

 

[Spartan]

I'm just wondering if the experts are right - if governments should buy up the opium and resell it to the pharmaceutical companies. I remember reading that Afghanistan alone could provide all the opiate for all of Africa's needs (nevermind the world's). This would have to be done while trying to help find another crop for the farmers to grow (and supporting the initial transition to this new crop).

 

[vangemeren]

In my opinion to get rid of the crop sucessfully, there has to be a compairable substitute in terms of economic returns and ease of growth for the poor farmers or else they won't buy into any drug control measures.

 

[tdwebste]

In my opinion to get rid of the crop sucessfully, there has to be a compairable substitute in terms of economic returns and ease of growth for the poor farmers or else they won't buy into any drug control measures.

I don't agree. I grew up as farmer, and there isn't much money in crowing corn, there is lot more in marijuana.
We didn't grow corn because it had comparable economic returns, but because growing marijuana met the police and bank took your farm.

 

[a_majoor]

There is a lot unsaid in that article:

1. Most farmers grow opium under compulsion. Despite what the "Farm gate" price is quoted, the farmers themselves don't see much of that.

2. Growing Opium is ileagal under Afghan law. Forcing the farmers to grow opium separates them from the government, and ensures that if they are caught and the harvest eradicated, they get nothing. (If they refuse to plant poppies they will be featured on a Taliban snuff video, so either alternative is unappealing).

3. Opium is inedible, so farmers are now at the mercy of whoever controls the food supply, since they will have very little food for themselves. Lots of incentive for the Taliban to get a lock on the local merchants as well..

Opium sales drive the logistical side of the insurgency, but is also part of a campaign to destabilize the rural economy and drive farmers away from the government. If cash was the only reason to grow opium, then the proper economic response is to grow as little as possible and drive up the price..