Poppy production up in Taliban areas of Afghanistan
LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan, Aug. 25 \ufffd Afghanistan produced record levels of opium in 2007 for the second straight year, led by a staggering 45 percent increase in the Taliban stronghold of Helmand Province, according to a new United Nations survey to be released Monday.
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While the report found that opium production dropped in northern Afghanistan, Western officials familiar with the assessment said, cultivation rose in the south, where Taliban insurgents urge farmers to grow poppies.
Although common farmers make comparatively little from the trade, opium is a major source of financing for the Taliban, who gain public support by protecting farmers\ufffd fields from eradication, according to American officials. They also receive a cut of the trade from traffickers they protect.
In Taliban-controlled areas, traffickers have opened more labs that process raw opium into heroin, vastly increasing its value. The number of drug labs in Helmand rose to roughly 50 from 30 the year before, and about 16 metric tons of chemicals used in heroin production have been confiscated this year.
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It's quite a contrast from the pre-war statements out of the [link|http://www.state.gov/secretary/former/powell/remarks/2001/2928.htm|State Department]:
At the direction of President Bush, I am today announcing a package of $43 million in new humanitarian assistance for the people of Afghanistan, including 65,000 tons of wheat, $5 million in complementary food commodities, and $10 million in other livelihood and food security programs within Afghanistan. We also expect to soon announce additional assistance to Afghan refugees.
Even before this latest commitment, the United States was by far the largest provider of humanitarian assistance for Afghans. Last year, we provided about $114 million in aid. With this new package, our humanitarian assistance to date this year will reach $124 million. This includes over 200,000 tons of wheat.
We will continue to look for ways to provide more assistance for Afghans, including those farmers who have felt the impact of the ban on poppy cultivation, a decision by the Taliban that we welcome.
The cynic in me would say that the Taliban opposes poppy production when they're attempting to repress the farmers from a position of power, and support it when they need money to fight the government.
This story latest reminds me of an article by [link|http://slate.com/id/2110987/|Hitchens]:
There is the further point that opium is good for us. Painkillers and anesthetics have to come from somewhere, and we have an arrangement with Turkey to grow and refine the stuff that we need. Why Turkey, an already over-indulged client state? Isn't it time to give the struggling Afghans a share of the business? We could simultaneously ensure a boost for Afghan agriculture, remove an essential commodity from terrorist and warlord control, and guarantee a steady supply of analgesics that would be free of impurities or additives.
There's a certain appeal to that, but having such a program effectively administered requires government control in the farming areas and that's not the case at present. A representative of [link|http://www.macsmith.com/default.aspx?pageId=113|Macfarlan Smith in the UK] said on [link|http://www.cbc.ca/radioshows/AS_IT_HAPPENS/20070820.shtml|As It Happens] that they can't use Afghan poppies to make morphine on a commercial scale because it has too much tar. He claimed they grow a different variety in the UK - one that won't grow in Afghanistan. It's not clear though whether that's a fundamental issue or just a result of the method of farming. [link|http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/HB01Df02.html|Asia Times]:
First, it is important to understand that while legal opium-poppy cultivation is undertaken for pharmaceutical use by 12 countries (Australia, China, the Czech Republic, France, Hungary, India, Japan, Slovakia, Spain, Macedonia, Turkey and the United Kingdom), only one of them, India, produces opium, the latex that bleeds, coagulates and is harvested from incised opium-poppy capsules. The 11 other actually grow opium poppies to harvest poppy straw and produce concentrate of poppy straw (CPS) in the context of a modern mechanized agriculture that resorts for the most part to combine harvesters on large tracts of cultivated land.
Conversely, because opium harvesting is a long and arduous manual process, it requires a numerous and, more than anything, cheap local workforce if the opium and morphine production process is to be economically viable. For that reason, and also because of international agreements derived from the role the opium economy played in its colonial past, opium is only legally produced in India.
Of course, since 12 countries already produce raw opium materials to make morphine, codeine and thebaine, and have significantly increased the concentration of alkaloids in opium-poppy plants, the INCB, pursuant to the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, wishes to "to avoid the proliferation of supply sites" to prevent diversion of opium-poppy plants and seeds licitly produced to the illicit market.
My take on that is that even if opium production were legal in Afghanistan, either there wouldn't be a world market for it for legal drugs due to its high tar content (taking John Manners's CBC comments at face value), or the price would be too high for it to be economical, or production would have to be mechanized to make it viable, thus eliminating the employment benefits to the farmers.
Perhaps other flowers could be substituted while Afghanistan's [link|http://www.gpfa.org/news/article070528.htm|orchards and vinyards] are rebuilt. But at the moment it's hard to see the Afghan government being able to repress opium production. Farmers need to make a living and alternative crops have many issues (among them the need for irrigation).
It's a tough problem...
Cheers,
Scott.