Pubdate: Sun, 31 Aug 2008 Source: Montreal Gazette (CN QU) Copyright: 2008 Canwest Publishing Inc. Contact: http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/letters.html Website: http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/274 Author: Scott Deveau, Canwest News Service Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/Poppy PLANTING POPPIES LURES POOR FARMERS Afghanistan Need Small Loans To Grow Wheat An old man waits with his two sons outside of a United Nation's distribution centre on a scorching August day in Kandahar City. They have been enticed from the Arghandab district west of the city by the promise of a single bag of wheat to take back to their impoverished family. He says he arrived here at 8 a.m., but four hours later he, along with dozens of others, still doesn't have his wheat, and he's losing his patience. "This seed is not for growing," he explains, "it's for eating." While he grows corn on his farm, he says he hasn't produced enough to feed his family. So, it's not really surprising then when asked if he has ever grown poppies to help supplement his income, he hesitantly admits he has. "If my children fill their stomachs, I don't care about the poppy," he says, asking not to be named because of the sensitive nature of the topic. Not only are poppies difficult to grow, requiring much weeding and watering, but it's illegal to grow them here and drug use runs counter to his Muslim beliefs, he says. But finding a market for other crops and affording the seeds in advance is beyond his means. The opium smugglers in Kandahar, on the other hand, like everywhere else in the country, pay upfront for the poppy, and they come to collect the sticky opium tar afterward. The certainty of income and ease to market has proved too much of a temptation. "I grow the poppy to feed my family," the farmer says. The head of the counter-narcotics efforts in Kandahar says if Canada and its NATO allies are serious about wiping out the opium trade in his province, they need to start providing short-term loans to farmers before the planting season begins in the coming weeks so they can afford to grow alternative crops this year, such as wheat. "Our farmers have financial problems and they need things like good seed, tractors and other farm equipment," says Gul Mohammad Shukran - Kandahar's director of drug control. "If you can't get people to grow wheat, then they produce poppies, and we have more addicts, crime, and other social problems." Shukran warns if Canada and its partners fail to provide these short-term loans, then the drug smugglers, and the insurgents they support, will be more than happy to. Last week, the UN released its annual survey of opium cultivation in Afghanistan. It found opium production was down 19 per cent compared with last year, and 18 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces are now opium-free. That's up from 13 last year, due in part to stronger local leadership and bad weather. Those successes, however, were marred by some more troubling figures, in particular for Kandahar and six other provinces in the south - Helmand, Uruzgan, Farah Nimroz, Daykundi and Zabul. The UN says these provinces are responsible for 98 per cent of the opium produced in Afghanistan, and Helmand alone accounts for two-thirds. With more than 90 per cent of world's heroin derived from Afghan opium, it's easy to see the impact the southwest corner of the country is having on the rest of the world, and Afghanistan itself. "There is now a perfect overlap between zones of high risk and regions of high opium cultivation," says Antonio Maria Costa, the executive director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. "Since drugs are funding insurgency, and insurgency enables drug cultivation, insurgency and narcotics must be fought together." The UN numbers also hide the fact the drop in opium production is largely attributable to a drought that hit several regions in the country this year, according to the Senlis Council, an international think tank with offices in Kabul. The Canadian International Development Agency is already one of the largest donors to the Microfinance Investment Support Facility for Afghanistan, which provides small loans - often less than $1000 - to Afghans across the country. But Canadian officials admit hardly anything is being done in the rural areas of Kandahar, in part because it's still not secure enough to implement such a system. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom