Poppy Eradication on the Cheap
Officials in northern province recruit schoolchildren to stamp out opium poppies.
Poppy Eradication on the Cheap
Officials in northern province recruit schoolchildren to stamp out opium poppies.
It’s a day out in the country for Noor Mohammad, as he stands in the middle of a field with a stick, beating energetically at the opium poppy plants around him.
“I like destroying poppies,” he said. “It’s fun to be away from the city for a day.”
Noor, 16, is in the tenth grade at a school in Mazar-e-Sharif, the capital of Balkh province. His one-day trip to the country is part of an experiment being conducted by the government’s counter-narcotics department in Balkh.
“Even with transportation and lunch, [school] students come a lot cheaper than any other work force,” explained Zabiullah Akhtari, a senior government official in charge of poppy eradication in Balkh. “We’re going to use students several more times before the end of the poppy season.”
Not all the participants share Noor’s enthusiasm for the task. By contrast, Parwaiz, 14, is scared to death. Sitting exhausted under a tree after his day’s labours, he looked around nervously as he spoke to an IWPR reporter.
“It’s a difficult task, but we have been ordered to do it by our school,” he said. “Now we’re just hoping that armed [militia] commanders don’t attack us.”
Parwaiz’s fear is not an idle one. Poppy eradication can be a hazardous occupation, as farmers sometimes turn violent when their livelihoods, and the fruit of several months’ labour, are wiped out.
In early May, a fifth-grade school pupil was killed in the northern province of Sar-e-Pul during a clash between police and farmers. Nine police were wounded during the skirmish.
“Violence erupted when a group of farmers interfered with a police anti-poppy operation in the village of Khowaja Archaq,” said Sar-e-Pul police chief General Nadir Fahimi, insisting that it was the farmers who opened fire first.
Sayed Iqbal Munib, governor of Sar-e-Pul, said the dead boy was not involved in the eradication campaign. “The student was fired upon mistakenly, and it is still not clear whether it was the police or the farmers who killed him,” said Munib. “He was a resident of the area.”
Still, the incident has put a damper on the drive to get schoolchildren out into the fields.
Ghulam Haider Qanoon, deputy head of Balkh’s education department, said his office was now reconsidering the use of student labour.
“We did not consult the education ministry when we decided to do this,” he said. “Fighting drugs is the duty of every Afghan. But now we see that the ministry does not want students to miss even one day of classes.”
Noting that some of the schoolchildren had been made ill from physical contact with the opium-laden plants, he said, “We have decided not to disturb the students during their class time.”
But without the free labour provided by students, said Akhtari. provincial officials may have a hard time completing their task, “We don’t have enough resources. We were using students to speed up the process.”
Employing untrained labour is not always the most efficient way of destroying the crop. According to Akhtari, farmers can still extract some opium from the plants after the young workers are finished.
But he said the exercise was still worthwhile for its educational value, “Our main goal was to make students understand that poppy is not a good thing.”
According to a United Nations report, Balkh was Afghanistan’s third largest producer of opium poppies in 2005, after Helmand and Kandahar.
Akhtari insisted that the eradication programme has been a success. Almost two-thirds of the 42,000 jeribs - over 20,000 acres - planted with opium has already been wiped out, he said, adding, “This year, Balkh ranks number one in terms of poppy eradication.”
But according to Balkh’s provincial governor, said Atta Mohammad Noor, preventing cultivation would be a lot cheaper and more effective than eradicating existing poppy fields.
“During the planting season, I asked the central government and even the president to provide us with enough resources to prevent cultivation, but we received no assistance from them,” he said.
Once farmers have invested time and labour in their crops, it is much more dangerous to destroy the harvest. “Farmers could definitely get violent if their year’s work is destroyed,” said Atta.
Abdul Haq Shafaq, the governor of neighbouring Samangan province, also blames the government for failing to address problems with eradication.
“When we destroy poppy fields, the farmers are waiting for an alternative. When we don’t give them anything, they think we have stolen everything and they grow mistrustful of the government,” he said.
The United Nation office on Drugs and Crime, UNODC, last year showed a 21 per cent decrease in land under cultivation. But some media reports predict a sharp rise in cultivation for 2006.
The picture on drug reduction is still not clear for the current year, said Zalmai Afzali, spokesman for the counter-narcotics ministry.
“The survey [on cultivation] and the eradication campaign is still going on all over Afghanistan,” he said. “So no report reflecting any increase or decrease is accurate.”
Afzali added the ministry is confident that cultivation has fallen this year, and said the eradication drive is being conducted more seriously than ever.
“Nothing can stop our operation. The poppy eradication drive is going on similarly in all provinces,” he said.
But the story in the provinces is somewhat less rosy. Officials and farmers tell familiar tales of corruption and official involvement in drug trafficking.
“When we detain a drug smuggler on charges of poppy cultivation, he is released after one day,” said Shafaq. “This indicates that those who want poppy to exist in Afghanistan are much stronger than we are.”
A farmer in the Chamtal district of Balkh, who did not want to be named, gestured at his poppy field, still not completely harvested.
“Local officials get about 2000 afghanis [40 US dollars] per jerib of land as a bribe. Those who can’t pay have their crops destroyed,” he said. “We are gathering the harvest as fast as we can so that they don’t hold us up for money again.”
General Mohammad Daud Daud, the deputy interior minister in charge of counter-narcotics, acknowledged that the eradication programme still had problems, but maintained that the situation was improving.
“We get more experienced every year,” he said.
Daud also denied that central government was not providing adequate resources to the provinces. “We pay the expenses of all provinces that are conducting poppy eradication,” he said.
However, he added, this year the donor countries have changed the payment procedures, “They first conduct a survey, then they provide provincial officials with funds based on the total number of poppy fields destroyed.”
Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi is an IWPR staff reporter in Mazar-e-Sharif.
“I like destroying poppies,” he said. “It’s fun to be away from the city for a day.”
Noor, 16, is in the tenth grade at a school in Mazar-e-Sharif, the capital of Balkh province. His one-day trip to the country is part of an experiment being conducted by the government’s counter-narcotics department in Balkh.
“Even with transportation and lunch, [school] students come a lot cheaper than any other work force,” explained Zabiullah Akhtari, a senior government official in charge of poppy eradication in Balkh. “We’re going to use students several more times before the end of the poppy season.”
Not all the participants share Noor’s enthusiasm for the task. By contrast, Parwaiz, 14, is scared to death. Sitting exhausted under a tree after his day’s labours, he looked around nervously as he spoke to an IWPR reporter.
“It’s a difficult task, but we have been ordered to do it by our school,” he said. “Now we’re just hoping that armed [militia] commanders don’t attack us.”
Parwaiz’s fear is not an idle one. Poppy eradication can be a hazardous occupation, as farmers sometimes turn violent when their livelihoods, and the fruit of several months’ labour, are wiped out.
In early May, a fifth-grade school pupil was killed in the northern province of Sar-e-Pul during a clash between police and farmers. Nine police were wounded during the skirmish.
“Violence erupted when a group of farmers interfered with a police anti-poppy operation in the village of Khowaja Archaq,” said Sar-e-Pul police chief General Nadir Fahimi, insisting that it was the farmers who opened fire first.
Sayed Iqbal Munib, governor of Sar-e-Pul, said the dead boy was not involved in the eradication campaign. “The student was fired upon mistakenly, and it is still not clear whether it was the police or the farmers who killed him,” said Munib. “He was a resident of the area.”
Still, the incident has put a damper on the drive to get schoolchildren out into the fields.
Ghulam Haider Qanoon, deputy head of Balkh’s education department, said his office was now reconsidering the use of student labour.
“We did not consult the education ministry when we decided to do this,” he said. “Fighting drugs is the duty of every Afghan. But now we see that the ministry does not want students to miss even one day of classes.”
Noting that some of the schoolchildren had been made ill from physical contact with the opium-laden plants, he said, “We have decided not to disturb the students during their class time.”
But without the free labour provided by students, said Akhtari. provincial officials may have a hard time completing their task, “We don’t have enough resources. We were using students to speed up the process.”
Employing untrained labour is not always the most efficient way of destroying the crop. According to Akhtari, farmers can still extract some opium from the plants after the young workers are finished.
But he said the exercise was still worthwhile for its educational value, “Our main goal was to make students understand that poppy is not a good thing.”
According to a United Nations report, Balkh was Afghanistan’s third largest producer of opium poppies in 2005, after Helmand and Kandahar.
Akhtari insisted that the eradication programme has been a success. Almost two-thirds of the 42,000 jeribs - over 20,000 acres - planted with opium has already been wiped out, he said, adding, “This year, Balkh ranks number one in terms of poppy eradication.”
But according to Balkh’s provincial governor, said Atta Mohammad Noor, preventing cultivation would be a lot cheaper and more effective than eradicating existing poppy fields.
“During the planting season, I asked the central government and even the president to provide us with enough resources to prevent cultivation, but we received no assistance from them,” he said.
Once farmers have invested time and labour in their crops, it is much more dangerous to destroy the harvest. “Farmers could definitely get violent if their year’s work is destroyed,” said Atta.
Abdul Haq Shafaq, the governor of neighbouring Samangan province, also blames the government for failing to address problems with eradication.
“When we destroy poppy fields, the farmers are waiting for an alternative. When we don’t give them anything, they think we have stolen everything and they grow mistrustful of the government,” he said.
The United Nation office on Drugs and Crime, UNODC, last year showed a 21 per cent decrease in land under cultivation. But some media reports predict a sharp rise in cultivation for 2006.
The picture on drug reduction is still not clear for the current year, said Zalmai Afzali, spokesman for the counter-narcotics ministry.
“The survey [on cultivation] and the eradication campaign is still going on all over Afghanistan,” he said. “So no report reflecting any increase or decrease is accurate.”
Afzali added the ministry is confident that cultivation has fallen this year, and said the eradication drive is being conducted more seriously than ever.
“Nothing can stop our operation. The poppy eradication drive is going on similarly in all provinces,” he said.
But the story in the provinces is somewhat less rosy. Officials and farmers tell familiar tales of corruption and official involvement in drug trafficking.
“When we detain a drug smuggler on charges of poppy cultivation, he is released after one day,” said Shafaq. “This indicates that those who want poppy to exist in Afghanistan are much stronger than we are.”
A farmer in the Chamtal district of Balkh, who did not want to be named, gestured at his poppy field, still not completely harvested.
“Local officials get about 2000 afghanis [40 US dollars] per jerib of land as a bribe. Those who can’t pay have their crops destroyed,” he said. “We are gathering the harvest as fast as we can so that they don’t hold us up for money again.”
General Mohammad Daud Daud, the deputy interior minister in charge of counter-narcotics, acknowledged that the eradication programme still had problems, but maintained that the situation was improving.
“We get more experienced every year,” he said.
Daud also denied that central government was not providing adequate resources to the provinces. “We pay the expenses of all provinces that are conducting poppy eradication,” he said.
However, he added, this year the donor countries have changed the payment procedures, “They first conduct a survey, then they provide provincial officials with funds based on the total number of poppy fields destroyed.”
Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi is an IWPR staff reporter in Mazar-e-Sharif.
