Opium a threat in Afghanistan
Fast-growing new seeds likely tied to Taliban
Zhari, Afghanistan — It’s the cash crop of the Taliban and the scourge of Afghanistan — the country’s intractable opium cultivation. This year, many Afghan poppy farmers are expecting a windfall as they get ready to harvest opium from a new variety of poppy seeds said to boost yield of the resin that produces heroin.
The plants grow bigger, faster, use less water than seeds they’ve used before, and give up to double the amount of opium, farmers say.
No one seems to know where the seeds originate from. The farmers of Kandahar and Helmand provinces, where most of Afghanistan’s poppies are grown, say they were hand-delivered for planting early this year by the same men who collect the opium after each harvest and who also provide them with tools, fertilizer, farming advice — and the much-needed cash advance.
To the villagers, the shadowy men are intermediaries for drug lords and regional traffickers working with or for the Taliban, underscoring the extensive web that fuels the opium trade and keeps the poppy farmers in a clasp of terror and dependency. The impoverished farmers have little recourse but to accept the seeds and other farming materials on credit, to be paid back when they harvest the crop, continuing a never-ending cycle of debt.
Afghanistan’s poppy harvest, which accounts for most of the world’s heroin, is worth an estimated $3 billion a year, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Production hit a record high in 2014, up 17% compared with the year before, as opium and the drug trade continued to undermine security, rule of law and development, while funding both organized crime and the Taliban — often one and the same.
The trend is expected to continue in 2015, in part thanks to the new poppy seeds, according to officials tasked with overseeing the eradication of poppy crops.
This upcoming harvest in late spring is expected to surpass last year’s countrywide record of 8,600 tons by as much as 7% and 22% in Kandahar and Helmand provinces respectively, local officials said.
Experts say the Taliban, who have been waging war on the Kabul government for more than a decade, derive about 40% of their funding from opium, which in turn fuels their insurgency.
Fierce fighting in recent months in poppy-growing regions shows the Taliban’s determination to protect their trafficking routes and the seasonal workers who come to earn money at harvest time from government forces under orders to eradicate the crop.
Gul Mohammad Shukran, chief of Kandahar’s anti-narcotics department, said the new seeds came with the drug traffickers, but he did not know exactly where from. They yield “better drug plants, which require less water and have a faster growth time,” he said. “This is a big threat to everyone.” He said Afghanistan’s central authorities had failed to act on his warnings.
Growing poppy for opium is illegal in Afghanistan and forbidden under Islam, the country’s predominant religion. But Afghan farmers feel they have no choice. For more than a decade, the government and its international partners have pleaded with them to grow something else — wheat, fruit or even saffron.
When that didn’t work, police were sent to destroy crops. And when that failed, the Americans and the British tried handing out free wheat seeds, an enterprise that found little fertile ground.
In Kandahar’s Zhari district, farmer Abdul Baqi said he knows poppy growing is illegal and that, given a choice, he would “rather eat grass.” But, he added, “I cannot feed my kids with nothing but the air.”
Baqi said the Taliban and associated crime gangs make it easy for the farmers to produce opium, and difficult — even deadly — not to.
Without government support, it’s impossible to grow food crops as the cashstrapped farmers would have to pay for the seeds, tools, fertilizer and irrigation themselves. No one would come and collect their crop, even if their landlords allowed them to grow wheat or other food.
If the government took charge and provided irrigation and power, Hismatullah Janan, another Zhari poppy grower, said he would gladly change to growing wheat or similar crops “so we could make an honest and decent living, and leave this so-called dirty work behind.”
Afghanistan supplies 90% of the world’s opium, and opiates originating from there find their way to every corner of the globe, said John Sopko, the U.S. special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction.