Another Bumper Opium Year Looms for Helmand

Rahim Gul is working on his land, a vast tract in the Shawol area of Nad Ali, one of Helmand’s main centres of poppy cultivation. He leans on his rake and sighs.



“I get very tired during the poppy planting season,” he said. “It takes so much work. Growing poppy is like trying to cure a madman.”



Nad Ali is a mostly agricultural district, a large canal supplying its farmers with water. The main crop is poppy, which has made Helmand province into the world’s main supplier of opium and its derivative heroin. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, UNDC, estimates that close to half of the heroin on the streets of Europe originates in this one province of Afghanistan.



In 2007, Helmand harvested its largest crop to date, the estimated 4,400 tons representing a 57 per cent increase on the previous year, according to the UNODC’s “Afghanistan Opium Survey 2007, issued in August. That figure far outstripped the second-biggest producer, Nangarhar, which rocketed to just over 1,000 tons.



If Nad Ali is any reflection of the province as a whole, 2008 could be an even bigger year for Helmand.



The much-vaunted eradication campaign appears to have failed to stem Helmant’s relentless rise as the leading producer. The UNODC report said that the 103,000 hectares under poppy in 2007 represented a 48 per cent increase on last year’s area, but only 4,000 hectares of crops were destroyed, some 20 per cent less than in 2006. Counter-narcotics officials admit privately that the actual area eradicated may well have been even smaller than that.



The United States and British governments have devoted significant resources to alternative livelihood programmes, but Rahim Gul says Helmand’s cautious farmers are reluctant to believe in ephemeral promises.



“To be honest, this alternative livelihood thing is not really a certainty for us,” he explained. “It will never replace poppy. Poppy is a good crop for us, it makes us lots of money and helps us get back on our feet sooner. I have never seen anyone else trying to help us.”



Helmand is now plagued by a growing insurgency. The violence has escalated steadily over the past year, and the resulting instability has hindered the counter-narcotics effort as well as preventing the implementation of any coherent development strategy.



Farmers are not prepared to give the government or international aid organisations the benefit of the doubt. Disappointed by unfulfilled promises, they say they will continue growing poppy as long as they are able to make money from it.



“I will never quit cultivating poppy,” said Rahim Gul. “Even if the government comes with sacks of aid, I still wouldn’t believe them. This Karzai-Bush government is a liar.”



Many Afghans view President Hamed Karzai as a puppet of the United States and President George Bush.



Rahim Gul’s son brought him some tea, which he drank in one gulp, and then turned back to his work.



“I have to get these peanuts harvested so I can prepare the land for poppy,” he said.



In Helmand’s warm, dry climate, poppy is sown in the autumn and harvested in the spring. On a bright autumn day in Nad Ali, farmers were out with rakes and tractors on every plot of land, preparing their fields for planting.



A brief poll revealed that almost all these farmers were planning to grow poppy. The common theme was that there was no viable alternative that would yield the same kind of income.



Finally, one farmer, dressed all in black with a scarf covering his face to protect him from the dust, said that he did plan to stop.



“I never got any benefit from poppy, so I have decided not to grow it this year,” said Sher Zamaan.



However, he insisted his decision had nothing to do with the official eradication effort, which he said could be circumvented through bribery.



“I don’t give a damn about the government’s anti-poppy campaign,” he said. “If I paid them 1,000 afghani per jerib [0.2 hectare], my poppy would be safe. I haven’t quit poppy cultivation because of the government. They have never destroyed our poppy, they just want money.”



Farmers in Shin Kalay, another village in Nad Ali, told a similar story. Hossein, who belongs to the Hazara ethnic group in a province that is largely Pashtun, sided with the majority – he too will be growing poppy this autumn.



“Why not?” he asked. “It’s a very good crop. We make good money.”



Hossein explained that he needed cash for his son, who had just got engaged. Marriage is an expensive business for the groom and his family in Afghanistan.



“We need 600,000 afghani [12,000 dollars] just for him,” said Hossein. “Without poppy, that will be impossible.”



He had never heard of alternative livelihoods, and was not exactly clear about the provincial department of agriculture.



“This is all nonsense,” he said. “No one in this village has heard about this [agriculture] department, and no one has offered to help us.”



In the provincial capital Lashkar Gah, IWPR met Anwar Aka, who was about to return home to the Washir district with a sack of sugar that he had just bought.



Asked about poppy, the large man became angry, and set down his burden.



“We don’t grow poppy in Washir,” he said in a low rumbling voice. “We can’t. There isn’t a single drop of water in our karezes [traditional irrigation system]. We only have one karez for the whole of Washir district, and it doesn’t provide a drop of water. So how are we supposed to grow poppy?”



According to Anwar, Washir is almost completely controlled by the Taleban, preventing the Afghan government and aid groups from working in the area.



In other districts, non-government groups have started project to build karez networks, install drip irrigation systems and encourage alternative crops in other ways.



But given the precarious security situation, monitoring such projects is difficult, and agriculture experts acknowledge privately that they have no control over ensuring that such improvements will slow poppy cultivation rather than facilitate it it.



“No NGO can come to Washir,”said Anwar. “We all think it would be better to get out. If I were living in Nad Ali, I would definitely grow poppy, because without it we can’t afford to support our families. There is no work, no jobs. The government is just stupid.”



He grabbed his sugar sack and stamped off.



Ghulam Nabi, head of the Helmand department for agriculture, was not optimistic that the alternative livelihoods programme was the answer .



“The department does not have the resources to help farmers with alternative livelihoods,” he said. “We did give pepper and tomato seedlings to some farmers in neighbouring districts last year, but it definitely wasn’t enough.”



According to Ghulam Nabi, organisations such as the Central Asia Development Group were working in Helmand to provide assistance to farmers.



“But it is too little for the whole of Helmand,” he added. “We need a large amount of international aid and support. Sending some seedlings to Nawa and Nad Ali isn’t sufficient,” he said.



The problem was well beyond their ability to cope, he added. “It is bigger than our department,” he said. “It is bigger than our entire ministry. And it needs international coordination.”



One thing the government was trying to do was raise the purchase price of crops such as cotton, in a bid to make them seem more attractive, as well as legal, alternatives.



“[Governor] Assadullah Wafa and I are trying to get 50 afghani [one dollar] for a kilo of cotton,” he said. “The farmers might then look on cotton with more favour and leave off growing poppy.”



However, he admitted that it will remain very difficult to prevent poppy being grown given the poor security situation.



“A lot of poppy is grown on reclaimed land such as desert,” he said. “People dig wells, and it makes for a very good crop. The government will be able to control the cultivation only when it can bring security to those areas.”



Barry Kavanagh, an advisor with Britain’s Department for International Development, DfID, at Helmand’s Provincial Reconstruction Team, said that to date, more than 100 million dollars has been spent on alternative livelihood creation in Helmand.



He said most of the funds had been committed by the US Agency for International Development, USAID, while Britain was contributing approximately 20 million dollars a year.



Kavanagh noted that while the US was working through private contractors such as Chemonics, the British were channeling their funding direct to the Afghan ministries for agriculture and for rural reconstruction and development.



“It is for the ministries to decide how to disperse the funds,” he said. “I am not sure of the exact number of farmers who have been helped, but last year we donated 80 tractors to the government. They were supposed to use them during the planting season, to assist the farmers with ploughing and planting, and then, when poppy season came, the same tractors would be used to eradicate poppy.”



Asked why, with all the funds going into assistance, most farmers in the prime poppy-growing districts of Nawa, Nad Ali and Marja remained unaware of alternative livelihood projects, Kavanagh had no ready answer.



“The complexity of the problem here is that poppy produces a lot more money than wheat or cotton,” he said. “The farmers are more inclined to go for the big economic return. We need to show them that there are options away from poppy, which is illegal and causes harm to the people of Afghanistan.”



With drug addiction and all its associated ills on the rise within the country, it was high time that farmers took their responsibilities seriously, Kavanagh added.



“We need to get farmers to think about having a moral conscience,” he said. “If we can help them grow another crop that can give them a good income and sustain their families, then that is the choice they should be making.”



Mohammad Ilyas Dayee is an IWPR staff reporter in Helmand.