Learning more about some of the problems here

Some of the meetings I've attended have to do with the poppy and illicit opium trade here in Afghanistan. While the UK government is the lead in the counter narcotics effort, several other governments, non-governmental organizations and consultants are working on ways to get farmers to grow other crops and to break the cycle of economic dependence on poppies.

For the most part it boils down to economics -- when a farmer can make $5,000 on a field of poppies without even having to take them to market, and the next most lucrative crop will only bring $500, the choice for the farmer is not difficult. That being said, recent U.N. statistics say that only 10% of Afghan farmers are involved in the poppy trade.

But there are other considerations as well, and a blogger on the New York Times blog site, who has apparently spent a lot of time in poppy-producing regions, probably captured it best:

The most sophisticated produce traders of all are the opium dealers. Opium is a perfectly integrated element in the local economy. At harvest time for poppies, tinkers prominently display the tools of the trade in heaps: small sticks with two teeth for scoring the stems, and wood-edged metal scrapers for collecting the sap. It is not just the market value that induces so many people to plant the frilly-edged pink and white blooms. With homegrown savvy, opium traders offer farmers a range of often irresistible advantages.
The most important of these is credit. There are no financial institutions to speak of in Kandahar, so there is no way to take out a loan — even though loans are needed not only for yearly agricultural inputs such as fertilizer, but for the several major outlays every family incurs. For example, in Afghanistan, bride price, not dowry, is the cultural norm. It costs a family $5,000 to $10,000 to marry off a son — a fortune. Usually, the new bride leaves her family’s home and joins that of her husband. Often a new room must be added to the family compound. In these cases, one of the few people a family can borrow from is the local opium trafficker. Typical terms include repayment in a year, in opium, which is counted at half the market value — making the transaction in effect a 100-percent interest loan. Dealers also solve farmers’ logistics problems by picking up the opium paste at the farm gate.

Another factor pushing farmers toward the cultivation of poppies is the scarcity of water. If it is exceptionally dry and growers must in effect pay for water — because they must buy diesel to fire the pumps that draw it up from wells — then they may well have to take land out of production, because it is simply too expensive to water. That means many farmers must plant their reduced acreage with a high-value crop in order to survive.

Because of these constraints, it does not seem sensible to focus anti-opium campaigns on growers. Growers need — as I have heard village elders repeat since I began working in Kandahar in 2002 — improved infrastructure for transporting their produce to market and assistance with techniques to expand their market access, such as training in how to clean and package their dry fruit for the international market. Perhaps above all, they need access to credit.

But since the fall of the Taliban, farmers have seen almost none of these things — except improved primary and secondary roads. A cold-storage warehouse financed by the Indian government was completed only this spring, and local and provincial authorities are still squabbling over jurisdiction and how it should be regulated. So it remains padlocked, while Panjwayi’s grapes rot in the market.

Opium eradication campaigns target the lowest rung of the opium economy, the struggling farmers. Yet well-known traffickers strut around town, flaunting their connections with senior officials. They drive late-model S.U.V.’s. They buy up property at fantastic prices and build wedding cake villas — the kind that used to be rented out to al-Qaeda members.

Trading in bulk opium is not the only way to make a killing off it. Eradication campaigns themselves have proven a gold mine for corrupt public officials. In 2002, compensation vouchers in Helmand Province were sold to people who did not even own farmland. Since then, I have come to know of a provincial governor and a district administrator who have routinely offered protection from eradication to whole villages, for a price. Government officials’ provision of safe passage to opium convoys — for a flat fee or a cut of the profits — is a matter of common knowledge. I know one governor and two security officials who, when they caught an opium shipment and arrested those conveying it, received calls or written orders from superiors commanding them to let the goods go. In two such cases, the subordinate who balked was dismissed from his position.

So glaring are these realities that everyone in southern Afghanistan is aware of them. And they make a mockery of all the pious hand-wringing — by international and Afghan officials — about the opium problem. They make a mockery of any pretense that the post-Taliban government might be law-abiding and accountable. And they open the door to Taliban insurgents, who this spring in Panjwayi set themselves up as the defenders of farmers against unjust government eradication.

Providing alternative crops or livelihoods for farmers is just one small piece of a complex problem that will take many years to reduce. But despite growing criticisms of how difficult it will be to break the cycle, in my humble opinion the international community cannot walk away. Afterall, how many years have we been fighting illegal drug use in our own countries?