Afghan poppy cultivation on the rise: UN
Crops fund Taliban and local gangs
KABUL — Opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has been increasing for a third year in a row and is heading for a record high, the UN said in a report released Monday.
The boom in poppy cultivation is at its most pronounced in the Taliban’s heartland in the south, the report showed, especially in regions where troops of the U.S.-led coalition have been withdrawn or are in the process of departing. The report suggests that whatever international efforts have been made to wean local farmers off the crop, they are having little success.
Increased production has been driven by unusually high opium prices, but more cultivation of Afghanistan’s premier cash crop is also an indication that Afghans are turning to illicit markets and crops as the real economy shrinks ahead of the expected withdrawal of foreign combat troops at the end of 2014.
Afghanistan is the world’s largest producer of opium, the raw ingredient in heroin, and last year provided about 75 per cent of the global crop, a figure that may jump to 90 per cent this year because of increased cultivation.
Crop sales mostly fund local power brokers and criminal gangs in Afghanistan and to a lesser degree the Taliban, western experts believe. This makes it difficult for the Afghan government to establish control in areas where the economy is driven by black-market opium sales, despite a small but effective counter-narcotics force.
“As we have predicted, opium will go up for a third year in a row,” said Jean-Luc Lemahieu, head of the UN office on drugs and crime in Afghanistan, which prepared the report along with the Afghan counter-narcotics ministry. “We are looking at a record high cultivation.”
The exact figure for 2013 is still unclear, but the UN said that indications are it will surpass the 154,000 hectares planted in 2012, and the 131,000 in 2011.
The report attributed the increase to the high price of opium, which has made cultivation attractive to farmers. Although prices were lower than the three previous years, they “were still at a higher level than between 2005 and 2009, making opium cultivation very attractive to farmers.”
Fear of eradication was the main reason cited by those farmers who decided not to cultivate the crop.
Prices started spiking in 2010, when blight killed much of the crop. They went from about $60 to $85 a kilogram to $300 in 2011. Although prices this year range from $160 to $200, they are still very high.
“This price is not explainable,” Lemahieu said. “Demand in the region and globally is even. There is no demand increase to explain this.”
“Afghanistan is to turn into a narco-state unless and until there is a comprehensive strategy that is adopted now,” said UNODC deputy representative Ashita Mittal. “Time is not on our side.”
The report found that poppy cultivation trends indicate that of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, an increase was predicted in 12, no major change in seven and a decrease in one, while 14 were expected to remain poppy-free.
Two of the provinces, southern Kandahar and Helmand, expect “high” and “very high” cultivation levels. They are the two provinces where the U.S.-led coalition is withdrawing troops after focusing forces during a three-year surge that ended last year. They were also two of the provinces where great emphasis was placed on finding alternative crops for farmers.
“The southern region is expected to remain the largest opium cultivating region in Afghanistan in 2013. Poppy cultivation in Helmand and Kandahar, the main opium cultivating provinces in the country, is expected to increase and Helmand is expected to retain its status as the largest opium cultivating province in the country,” the report said.
In Helmand province, the head of the Afghan counternarcotics police, Mohammad Abdali, said his forces were carrying out operations in areas controlled by the Taliban in an effort to eradicate poppy. He said they were facing resistance from the Taliban who had taken control of some poppy-growing regions. Abdali said his forces fought with the Taliban as they moved into the area, which had been heavily mined by insurgents.
“This is an area where the Taliban told people that they can cultivate poppy and the government can’t destroy it,” he said from his office in Gareshk on Sunday. “They escaped and we are destroying all poppy in the area.”
But in Bagri, a village only 30 kilometres away, farmers could be seen in their fields that day harvesting opium poppy, making no apparent effort to disguise what they were doing.