Pubdate: Mon, 03 Jul 2006
Source: Independent  (UK)
Copyright: 2006 Independent Newspapers (UK) Ltd.
Contact:  http://www.independent.co.uk/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/209
Author: Tom Coghlan, in Kabul and Kandhar

TWO BRITISH SOLDIERS KILLED AS AFGHAN POPPY CROP BOOMS

Two more British soldiers have died in Afghanistan, as Western 
officials in the country have admitted that the country is to produce 
its largest ever poppy harvest.

The deaths, the fourth and fifth in three weeks, come as Western 
military commanders and counter-narcotics officials appear 
increasingly at odds over how to approach the drugs problem in the 
south of the country. Military officers are fearful the $1bn 
(UKP540m) a year campaign to eradicate the drug is helping pull in 
recruits for the Taliban.

"The trends indicate that the area of cultivation will be 
considerably higher than in 2004," said a representative of the 
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, which will publish its 
annual report of the Afghan opium harvest next month.

In 2004, about 130,000 hectares of opium poppy was cultivated, which 
has been the largest so far, despite poor growing conditions that 
year. Better conditions across the country this year will help 
produce the largest tonnage of opium ever. But Afghanistan is already 
responsible for about 87 per cent of the world's opium and more than 
90 per cent of the heroin consumed in Britain.

Hamid Karzai, the President, and his government announced last year a

jihad on poppy production, backed by a near-$1bn campaign, led by the 
UK. It led to a fall by 21 per cent drop in the area under 
cultivation. Those gains have now been wiped out.

One Western official, who declined to be named, predicted a 
considerable rise, but not as extreme as that predicted by the UNODC. 
"The evidence collected so far indicates that the harvest will be 
significantly up on 2005 and perhaps around the 130,000hectare mark."

About one-third of this year's harvest has come from Helmand, where 
3,300 British troops are heavily engaged against Taliban guerrillas. 
British troops have fought firefights with them almost every day for 
the past week in the north of the province.

Some military commanders argue that eradication operations in the 
south should be suspended for a year or more. "We may have to say to 
the farmer we are not yet ready to provide an alternative 
livelihood," a Nato officer told The Independent. "There may have to 
be a period of grace where we say that by a certain time frame there 
can be no more poppy cultivation and at that point we will eradicate 
your poppy."

The officer said that such an approach would give Western forces the 
"moral high ground" against the Taliban's ongoing campaign to present 
itself as the defender of poppy farmers, a campaign which has had 
considerable effect in Helmand this year.

Another Western official said that "full and frank" exchanges were 
ongoing between military commanders and counter-narcotics officials 
over the issue of eradication. Counter-narcotics officials contend 
that a suspension of eradication, and removal of any punitive 
measures would only produce a further surge in poppy production. They 
argue this would help to fund elements with a vested interest in 
maintaining the current instability; instability that has killed more 
than 1,600 people in the first six months of this year.

The drugs economy is valued at $2.7bn, equivalent to more than 50 per 
cent of Afghanistan's legal economy. By contrast the government 
managed to generate legal revenues, outside of foreign aid, of only 
$330m last year. With most government officials on salaries of about 
$50 a month and a cost of living that is artificially inflated 
largely by the drugs economy, corruption is endemic.

Farmers in the south claim that in the absence of any other economic 
activity, poppy cultivation and high wages paid by the Taliban to 
fight for them offer the only sources of income to huge numbers of 
unemployed young men. Poppy cultivation, they say, is the only means 
of wealth creation without capital.

"If you cultivate poppy the smugglers pay you in advance, so you 
don't need any money to buy the seed or fertiliser," Haji Mohammad 
Sarwar, 45, an elder in the Punjwai district of Kandhar province, 
told The Independent. "You can make enough to buy some land. Five 
jiribs [1 hectare] of poppy is $5,000 profit even after the costs of 
labour and fertilizer."

Shamsuddin Tanwir, of Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights 
Commission in Kandahar, said: "In Taliban-held areas everyone 
cultivates poppy. They do not get any problems so they prefer Taliban."

Amid the general gloom, Western officials stress the long-term nature 
of the war on drugs and the several positive signs amongst this 
year's early findings. In the east of the country, where a 96 per 
cent drop in poppy cultivation was recorded last year, officials 
feared a large resurgence after unrealistic expectations of Western 
aid on the part of poppy farmers were not met. That resurgence was 
much smaller than feared and Nangahar province remains largely drug free.

Western officials also point to improvements in governance. Reforms 
of the police force have seen police chiefs, known to be capable and 
not corrupt, installed in a number of provinces in the south, 
including Helmand.

The new police chief in Helmand replaces a man who was named in 
leaked US intelligence documents as running heroin shipments in 
police vehicles. But there are still widespread claims that figures 
high in the government control the drugs trade, including allegations 
against President Karzai's brother Ahmed Wali Karzai, who is head of 
the provincial council for Kandahar province.

"There is no evidence for this claim," he told The Independent. "When 
people want to attack the President they say these things about me. 
It is like the spice on a dish." In Washington there is increasing 
pressure for a more radical approach to the drugs problem with the 
threat of aerial eradication being held up as the ultimate sanction 
if the softer methods favoured by the British and Afghan governments 
don't work.

Western sources have said that US counter-narcotics teams are 
exploring the possibility of using a form of Agent Orange, a 
defoliant that become notorious for turning large parts of south 
Vietnam into a lunar landscape during the Vietnam War. One Western 
official said: "Aerial spraying will definitely not be used as part 
of the poppyeradication for 2007, period. But if a decrease in poppy 
cultivation is not achieved soon it is something that will 
increasingly be brought to the front for consideration."

The official stressed that any aerial spraying would only be 
undertaken with Afghan consent.

The United Nations remains completely opposed to such a move. "We 
really hope that all relevant parties and stakeholders will see that 
aerial spraying will contribute to the conflict and will play into 
the hands of the insurgents, and based on this insight will not start 
this measure at all," said a representative of UNODC.

Farmers from Kakhrez, near the town of Musa Qala in north Helmand, 
told The Independent this month that helicopters dropped an unknown 
substance during April on to their fields:

"It was in Boom village," said Lal Mohammed. "The helicopters were 
heard overhead in the night. A white powder was on the plants in the 
morning. There were red and yellow spots on the trees. Eight jiribs 
of poppy (1.6 hectares) were affected. I saw the plants, they grew 
very small, they didn't bloom and they dried out." Western 
Counter-Narcotics officials denied the claim. Similar claims were 
made in Jalalabad in December 2004. They were never substantiated.
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