A bumper harvest of death

A bumper harvest of death

October 25, 2016
Afghanistan
Afghanistan

SOME farmers in Afghanistan are enjoying a very good harvest, but unfortunately the crop they are gathering in superabundance spells death and degradation around the world. Their harvest is of the opium poppy and according to the United Nations, this year has seen a 43 percent leap in production.

It is estimated that there are more than 180,000 hectares of farmland now given over to the cultivation of opium in a mountainous country that can ill afford to lose farmland on which food crops could be raised. Up until last year, there had been a desultory eradication campaign run out of Kabul. In 2015 just 4,000 hectares were cleared. This year, that figure has collapsed to less than 400 hectares.

One reason for this reversal is the fighting. More than half of all opium poppies are grown in the south of the country which is now dominated by a resurgent Taliban. During the brief rule of the Taliban, there was a ban on the narcotics trade. But they have now abandoned that high principle.

Local commanders not only benefit from taxes collected from the farmers, the merchants who buy the narcotics and those who transport them away along smuggling routes, the Taliban have actually been forcing farmers to turn over more of their land to the evils of opium poppy cultivation. There are reports that they have also procured hybrid, higher-yielding poppy seed from outside the country, which they oblige the farmers to buy.

There is still widespread rural poverty despite the billions in aid that has been poured into the country since the ouster of the Taliban. Much of the money pledged in December 2001 at the international donor conference held in Bonn was plundered by dishonest ministers in Kabul or local governors or warlords.

Because President George W Bush effectively abandoned Afghanistan after the successful invasion, refocusing US military efforts on the overthrow of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, the security situation in Afghanistan did not stabilize. And once the Taliban had recovered from the shock of their defeat, they were able to start their deadly fight-back.

That the Taliban are prepared to encourage, control and profit from the deadly opium trade is the biggest indictment of the high principles to which they pretend. Daesh (the so-called IS) is every bit as prepared to exploit the drugs trade for tits own blasphemous ends.

Ever since the 1973 overthrow of King Zahir Shah, the Marxist coup and the subsequent Soviet invasion, Afghanistan has been a war. Almost half a century of battle has inflicted untold damage on the country and its people. From the very outset the conflict was stoked by outside forces who promoted internal ethnic rivalries for their own ends.

In a country so steeped in death and destruction, perhaps the production of the basis for heroin that will destroy countless lives around the world, is of small concern. Exploited, brutalized and generally ignored by the distant government in Kabul, the small farmers who grow the deadly poppies simply want to stay safe and earn enough to keep their families.

This does not make their crime any the less. The idea of cutting off most of the world’s heroin production at its source makes a lot of sense. The mystery is why NATO never used its laser-guided air weapons technology to deliver chemicals that would eradicate the country’s entire crop.


October 25, 2016
HIGHLIGHTS