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PAS : KE ARAH PEMERINTAHAN ISLAM YANG ADIL
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Opium Poppies Take Root Once Again in Afghanistan
By RONE TEMPEST, Los Angeles Time STAFF WRITER
KARIZ, Afghanistan - No one could be more delighted
about the departure of the Taliban regime than the
opium poppy growers here in eastern Afghanistan.
In July 2000, the Taliban's leader, Mullah Mohammed
Omar, issued an edict banning poppy cultivation across
Afghanistan, then the world's largest producer of the
flower pod used to make heroin.
For years, the Taliban had used taxes on drugs to
finance its military. That all changed, however, with
Omar's eight-line message.
According to a recent report by the U.N. Drug Control
Program, the decree brought raw opium production in
Afghanistan to a virtual halt, dropping from 3,276
tons to only 185 tons in just one year.
But now that the local Taliban has retreated to the
mountains, there is an eagerness among farmers here in
the irrigated lowlands south of Jalalabad, the capital
of Nangarhar province.
On Wednesday, farmer Ahmed Shah and his neighbors were
busy fertilizing and tilling their small plots of
land, preparing to plant poppy seeds that will be
harvested next April, processed into heroin in
neighboring Pakistan and delivered to overseas
markets.
"I can make 10 times more with poppy than I can with
wheat," Shah said as two teenage boys turned the soil
nearby.
The farmers of eastern Afghanistan are fully aware of
the epidemic they feed with their beautiful flowers.
They see the hollow-eyed addicts in the bazaars of
Peshawar when they travel to Pakistan.
"We know we are creating addicts," Shah said. "The
only reason we are doing this is because we are poor.
If I could find another job, I would stop growing
poppies."
Samsul Haq, deputy director of the Nangarhar Drug
Control and Coordination Office, estimates that before
the Taliban edict, 85% of the Jalalabad agricultural
economy was driven by opium production.
"This is a great opportunity for poppy growers," Haq
said. "The Taliban is gone. There is confusion about
what kind of new order is coming in. The farmers are
free to plant poppies."
Haq said that unless poppy production is checked by
massive foreign aid to provide the farmers with an
alternative, Afghanistan is almost certain to return
to its dubious distinction as the world's top supplier
by next summer.
The farmers in Kariz, a mud-walled village of 600
families where everyone grows poppies, see opium as
the fastest, surest way out of the wrenching poverty
brought on by more than two decades of war and
turmoil.
On one side of the farmland lies an irrigation canal
built under a 1950s Soviet foreign aid program. In the
distance are two twisted and broken high-tension
towers that date to a time when this area had
electricity. Everywhere are signs of war: carcasses of
downed Soviet aircraft and armored personnel carriers;
a military base pocked with huge craters from more
recent U.S. bombing attacks; desiccated groves of
olive and orange trees abandoned more than a decade
ago during the moujahedeen fight with the
Soviet-backed government.
Haji Saifuddin, a 60-year-old farmer, has been growing
poppies for more than 20 years on several plots he
owns near Kariz. He alternates poppy planting with
cotton, maize and wheat.
"When the Russians returned to their homeland,"
Saifuddin said, referring to the 1989 Soviet
withdrawal from Afghanistan, "I was a refugee in
Pakistan. I started growing poppies when I got back."
He said it costs him about 0 for fertilizer and seed
for each jerib (about half an acre) of poppies he
cultivates. Saifuddin said his return on each jerib is
about ,000, a small fortune here.
The Kariz villagers, Persian-speaking members of the
Afghan "Arab" tribe that claims to be descended from
Arab traders who traveled and settled here centuries
ago, live modestly in compounds with courtyards
planted with mulberry and date trees.
But a few miles away along another farm road are
massive homes that jut up above high, gated walls with
sentry towers on each corner.
Haq said these mansions are occupied by opium traders,
Afghanistan's drug barons. Some were built in the
style of modern, Western architecture.
One was made from the traditional adobe but many times
grander, appearing on the horizon like a giant sand
castle complete with turrets.
The Taliban ban on poppy cultivation--instituted four
years after the repressive regime came to power--had
an instant, devastating effect on the local farmers.
Nangarhar province is the second-biggest producer of
opium poppies in Afghanistan, topped only by Helmand
province west of the Taliban spiritual center,
Kandahar.
"I took an advance on opium before the ban," Saifuddin
said. "I was forced to sell 12 jeribs of land to pay
it back." Another farmer, Abdul Shakoor, 70, said he
lost ,500 because of the ban.
Because of the decree, the Taliban lost much of its
support among the poppy growers. The villagers said
there are only two active Taliban members left in the
village.
The farmers are more hopeful about the new political
order being created here. The post-Taliban governor of
Nangarhar province, Haji Abdul Qadir, also served as
governor from 1992 to 1996, in what is known as the
warlord period.
Qadir, an educated moujahedeen commander, started out
ambitiously with a staggered program to cut poppy
production.
Under promises from Western governments that his
province would be given technical and financial
assistance in exchange for opium controls, he cut
poppy production by 25% in his first year as governor.
But when the promised foreign aid did not materialize,
Qadir became enraged, lecturing a visiting delegation
of international drug experts.
"Next year," Qadir told the drug experts, "our farmers
will not only cultivate poppies in their fields but on
the roofs of their homes and in their flowerpots."
This kind of talk was music to the ears of the farmers
of Kariz village. Earlier this week, several of the
local elders, including Saifuddin, trooped into the
governor's mansion in Jalalabad to declare their
support for Qadir.
But uncertainty about the stability of the new order
also has them worried.
If the current Nangarhar government--composed of a
triumvirate of three former mujahedeen commanders,
including Qadir--fails, that might open the door to
rule by a countless collection of local commanders and
warlords.
"Most of the farmers are happy because they now grow
poppies," said Haq, "but they are also fearful that
these commanders will steal their income from opium."
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