Pubdate: Sat, 21 May 2016
Source: Daily Star, The (Lebanon)
Copyright: 2016 The Daily Star
Contact:  http://www.dailystar.com.lb/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/547
Author: Anuj Chopra, Agence France Presse

LANCE WITH LOVE: AFGHANS REVEL IN BOUNTIFUL OPIUM HARVEST

NAQIL, Afghanistan (AFP) - Lashes swished and whirled through the air 
in a burst of celebration around a sea of opium poppies, as farmers 
in a southern Afghan village rejoiced over a bumper harvest with a 
traditional rope game.

Hundreds of farm laborers from across the Pashtun heartland, many of 
them Taliban, congregated last month in Naqil in Uruzgan province for 
the most lucrative time of the year - the poppy harvest.

After laboring all day in the torpid heat, extracting milky opium 
resin from swollen green pods, they broke into revelry around the 
bountiful farms.

Hands tethered to long ropes, men lunged forward and back within a 
chalk circle, kicking up dust and knocking down opponents with heavy 
lash strokes.

Hissing and hooting, a crowd of turbaned spectators gathered around 
to watch the bare-knuckle game known colloquially as "dora."

A tricycle cart pulled up nearby, selling ice-cream drizzled with 
raspberry sauce, lending a carnival atmosphere to the harvest that is 
expected to bring record opium production this year.

"This is the only time of the year to make money," said Afzal 
Mohammad, who came all the way from Kandahar, standing amid 
chest-high poppy stalks nearby.

"People work here for about 15 days and then are jobless for the rest 
of the year."

The revelry highlights how opium - refined into heroin - remains an 
economic linchpin amid rampant unemployment, and lays bare how the 
West lost a multi-billion dollar war on drugs in Afghanistan as it 
pursued a war on terror there.

Afghanistan, the world's top opium producer, recorded more poppy 
cultivation in 2014 - at the end of which NATO troops officially 
ended their combat mission - than in any year since 2002.

Last year saw a sharp decline in production, but the crop failure was 
more due to drought than eradication campaign, according to the 
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

The drop, observers say, has only intensified efforts to spike 
production this year.

Fighting usually ebbs during the harvest season, illustrating how the 
Taliban are deeply entwined in the $3 billion opium trade, believed 
to be the mainstay of their insurgency against the government.

"As the harvest concludes ... we expect to see an uptick in Taliban 
efforts to attack [Afghan forces]," Charles Cleveland, senior 
spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, told reporters this month.

"There is a concern that the very good poppy crop this year ... is 
going to result in the Taliban being able to turn that into money for 
their [insurgent] efforts."

The ubiquity of opium farms in Uruzgan, a remote mountainous province 
straddling drug-smuggling routes, is staggering.

Poppy grows within eyeshot of the provincial governor's office in the 
capital Tarin Kot, government buildings and police bases, spurring 
allegations that officials are also profiting from the opium boom.

"We are in a state of war," Uruzgan's governor Mohammad Nazir Kharoti 
told AFP, sounding helpless.

"Forced eradication will increase economic hardship, fuelling 
sympathy for the Taliban and people will start sheltering them in their homes."

Naqil, hemmed in between verdant hills on the outskirts of Tarin Kot, 
is a netherworld of opium farmers, drug lords, addicts and, 
increasingly, the Taliban.

It is officially under government control, but authorities are openly 
wary about visiting the area.

With rolling fields of white-and pink flowers splashed between dull 
green opium pods visible as far as the eye can see, Naqil is a magnet 
for laborers during harvest time.

The bulbs are typically lanced during the afternoon and left for the 
night as a sticky resin oozes out and coagulates into a dark brown mass.

The laborers collect the sap in the mornings with a blade and wipe it 
in a plastic can around their necks.

Many wax philosophically about the process, almost as though it were 
an act of veneration.

"Cradle the poppy bulb gently," said Sher Mohammad, going from bulb 
to bulb in his farm, making shallow incisions with sharp blades on 
the tip of a curved wooden spatula. He added: "Lance the bulb with love."

For many, the labor-intensive season, which lasts less than a month, 
is the only productive period; the rest of the year is a hopeless blur.

"Afghanistan has too much war, very little employment," said tribal 
elder Abdul Bari Tokhi, whose extended family owns hundreds of acres 
of farmland in Naqil.

"The world might say if there was no poppy there would be no war in 
Afghanistan, but for us if there was no poppy there would be no work 
and no food on the table."

Many of the laborers in Naqil were Taliban fighters, residents said.

"How did you get here from Dehrawud district, my brother? The Taliban 
have shut down the highway," one of them asked a thickset man with 
scraggly hair and a gaptoothed smile.

"The highway is closed for the government, not the Taliban," the man smirked.

"That's right, you were the ones who shut down the highway," the 
laborer cackled with laughter.

"You are welcome here, my brother. Even the Taliban need to earn money."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom