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opium poppies
Afghan growers of opium poppies, back in business
By Trent Seibert
Denver Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 04, 2001 - SULTAN PUR, Afghanistan - Ahmed Azim is thrilled that the Taliban is no longer in control here.
Now he can grow all the opium poppies he wants.
"I wasn't allowed to cultivate poppies on my land when the Taliban ruled," said Azim, 40, as he spread yellow grainy seeds on dark, tilled dirt. "Now I can make money again."
Azim and his fellow farmers in the dusty plains outside of the eastern city of Jalalabad are planting opium poppies where last year they grew wheat or vegetables.
Some farmers have even ripped up the wheat seedlings they planted last month, replacing them with the new cash crop.
"There's no alternative'
Where now there are rows of dirt as far as the eye can see, in four months there will be miles of scarlet-flowered opium poppies, the prime ingredient for heroin.
"I know it's wrong. I know it's negative," said Khalid, a 35-year-old farmer who hoes land next to Azim. "But there's no alternative to support ourselves and our families. All of us are doing this now."
It's not just the dozens of farmers who live outside of Jalalabad. Countless others are doing the same thing across Afghanistan as the Taliban flees and its strict anti-drug laws go up in smoke.
One of the few rules the Taliban imposed that won worldwide acclaim was a ban on the growing of poppies two summers ago. But the Taliban's ban on poppy cultivation did not mean a ban on opium sales, farmers and dealers say. Nearly a year's supply had been stashed away in warehouses.
At its peak, Afghanistan was the world's biggest producer of opium poppies, growing enough to supply 75 percent of the world's heroin, according to the United Nations Drug Control Program.
Taliban banned crop
Farmers produced 3,611 tons from the 1999 planting. But after the Taliban crackdown, the crop in 2000 dropped to 204 tons, the agency said in July.
Now, with the Taliban gone, it appears inevitable that Afghanistan will once again flood the world market with heroin.
"There are many reasons we grow it," said farmer Abdul Nazir, 30, as he walked through his field tossing handfuls of seeds. "You don't need much water to grow it. And you can make money. How else can we, without factories or offices? There are no other jobs."
And there are plenty of jobs now that there is no opium ban.
If one stands quietly looking over those fields that stretch miles to the distant sandy brown mountains, one can see dozens of figures in the distance, churning the soil by hand, row by row.
The chop of shovels churning dirt is the only sound.
For many farmers across Afghanistan, growing opium poppies is a family affair. Azim has nine children, and all of them are old enough to help in the fields around his village
"They always help me with the planting," he said.
Crackdown unlikely
They will probably continue to help until they are old enough to become farmers themselves. That's because it appears unlikely that the Northern Alliance and the other warlords who now control most of Afghanistan will take the same tough stance on poppy production.
Regions controlled by the Northern Alliance - not the Taliban - accounted for most of Afghanistan's opium trade this year, according to a U.N. drug study released in October.
In one of those regions, the Badakhshan province, farmers cultivated 6,342 hectares of opium poppies last year, up from 2,458 the year before. That accounted for 83 percent of Afghanistan's total opium production, the report said.
Smuggling out of Afghanistan hasn't stopped either, so it's easy to reap the opium at the end of the season and sell it to Pakistani smugglers. That's big money for local farmers.
Heroin will head to West
Azim is planning to sell his opium poppies to smugglers for 50,000 Pakistani rupees per kilogram. That's about the equivalent of $800. That's also 90 percent more than what he got for his wheat last year.
The smugglers will then sneak the bales of opium poppies into underground laboratories along the border with Pakistan. When the poppies are turned into heroin, it will be sold throughout Pakistan and then flow into western Europe.
Some makes it to America, according the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency.
And Afghanistan farmers say they will continue to grow it, unless better jobs are created for them.
"I borrowed too much money," he said. "I must have money for my family. Without that, I can't do things. I can't buy things. Without that I can't eat."
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