generalspeaking

Growing Poppies in Afghanistan

The farmers of Kandahar and Helmand provinces, where Afghanistan's poppies are mostly raised explain they were given seeds for planting this year by the same people who collect the opium after each harvest season has wrapped up. These are the middlemen who provide the farmers with tools, fertilizer and farming advice. And the dire warning that they have no choice given them by the Taliban but to plant poppy.

In this Saturday, April 11, 2015 photo, Afghan farmers harvest raw opium at a poppy field in Kandahar’s Zhari district, Afghanistan. This year, many Afghan poppy farmers are expecting a windfall as they get ready to harvest opium from a new variety of poppy seeds said to boost yield of the resin that produces heroin. (AP Photo/Allauddin Khan)

The Taliban, after all, derive most of their income from the avails of the poppy crop, an estimated $3-billion annually according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. The harvest that will take place in late spring is anticipated in excess of last year's bumper crop of 7,800 tonnes. It is expected that Kandahar will surpass the last record by 7 percent, and Helmand province by 22 percent.

The hand-delivered seeds are new, potent, larger -- leading many Afghan farmers to expect a windfall, preparing to harvest opium from the new variety of seeds. The plants have been larger, they grow faster, need less water, and render up to double the opium, according to the poppy farmers. The origins of the new seeds are mysteriously unknown.

The men who visit the farmers with the seeds and instructions are the intermediaries employed by the drug lords to whom all answer, along with the traffickers, all of whom work with or for the Taliban. That combination fuels the opium trade. As for the poppy farmers, they are held in terrified thrall and dependency by the Taliban, leaving them little choice but to grow the poppies.

Foe years the poppy harvest, which provides most of the world's heroin, has increased year-over-year. The farmers have no other options but to accept the seeds and related farming equipment on credit, which they nominally repay when the harvest comes in, fuelling an endless cycle of impoverishment, debt and need. International efforts to convince Afghan farmers to grow other crops have largely failed.

Drugs and growing the means by which they are obtained is illegal in Afghanistan, and the practise is forbidden according to the Koran, but for the Taliban, the 'religious scholars' who seek to impose their rigid Islamist values on the country through the re-imposition of Sharia law, it is the accepted means by which the pious Islamists pursue their conflict with the government of Afghanistan.

Helmand provincial police chief Nabi Jan Malakhail explained that the new poppy seed doubles the output from each plant. At harvest time collectors cut the bulb of the plant remaining after the flowering, to permit the raw opium to be extracted; when the resin dries it is collected the day afterward. The new seeds result in larger bulbs that can be cut twice, doubling the quantity of raw opium.

In this Saturday, April 11, 2015 photo, Afghan farmers harvest raw opium at a poppy field in Kandahar’s Zhari district, Afghanistan. Growing poppy for opium is illegal in Afghanistan and forbidden under Islam, the country’s predominant religion. But Afghan farmers feel they have no choice. For more than a decade the government and its international partners have pleaded with them to grow something else wheat, fruit or even saffron. (AP Photo/Allauddin Khan)

The plants themselves mature in three to four months, as opposed to the five months it takes for maturation of the normal seed variety. This quicker maturation allows farmers to crop three times annually, rather than just twice. Abdul Baqi, a farmer in Kandahar's Zhari district, shrugs at the illegal aspect of poppy production, saying he would "rather eat grass" than grow poppies.

But, he also says, "I cannot feed my kids with nothing but the air".

Gul Mohammad Shukran, chief of Kandahar's anti-narcotics department, describes the new poppy seeds as yielding "better drug plants, which require less water and have a faster growth time. This is a big threat to everyone", he said. Deploring Afghanistan's central authorities having failed to act on his warnings. This is a country whose central government is incapable of defending the human rights of its people, thanks in no small part to endemic corruption.

In this Wednesday, April 15, 2015 photo, Afghan drug addicts take shelter near a bridge, in Kabul, Afghanistan. This year, many Afghan poppy farmers are expecting a windfall as they get ready to harvest opium from a new variety of poppy seeds said to boost yield of the resin that produces heroin. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)

Labels: Afghanistan, Drugs, Taliban

posted by Pieface @ Thursday, May 07, 2015