12 June 2008
Afghan Development Plan Confronts Drug Traffickers
Security and better governance reducing opium poppy cultivation
Washington -- Drug trafficking is the single largest threat to Afghanistan’s future, say its leaders as they seek international support for a new development strategy aimed at eliminating opium poppy production through better governance and new economic opportunities.
“Those who are engaged in the narcotics industry are opposed to any gain in the government’s legitimacy or stability for the country. They provide funding for terrorist activities and fuel corruption,” says the Afghanistan National Development Strategy, the centerpiece of the International Conference to Support Afghanistan, a donor’s conference being held in Paris June 12.
Five southern Afghan provinces account for 83 percent of the country’s opium poppy cultivation, which in turn accounts for virtually all of the heroin and related illegal narcotics flooding into Europe, the Middle East and Asia, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime.
But while 2007’s record-breaking Afghan opium poppy harvest captured headlines, the United Nations also says that poppy cultivation continues to shrink in the country’s other 26 provinces, including eight regions now regarded as “poppy-free.”
Security and good governance make all the difference, says U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher.
“In many of the areas in the north and the east of the country, with the assistance of dynamic governors, we've been able to increase the number of poppy-free provinces dramatically,” Boucher said June 10. “More and more, the drug trafficking is down in the south, where it’s associated with the insurgency and they feed off each other.”
The southern opium trade increasingly is controlled by drug kingpins and wealthy landowners who have partnered with the Taliban to take advantage of continued insecurity. They reaped an estimated $2.7 billion in 2007 while paying an average of only $1 per day to area farmers to work their fields, says a March 11 report from the State Department’s Office of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement (INL).
The new Afghan development plan builds on the country’s 2006 counternarcotics strategy and transfers more responsibility to provincial governors. It also views the narcotics challenge as a “cross-cutting issue” whose solution can be found in the plan’s parallel efforts to improve security, strengthen Afghanistan’s fledgling police force and justice system, and promote new economic opportunities through education, small business loans and reconstruction projects that can offer Afghans alternative livelihoods.
USAID MAKING A DIFFERENCE IN AFGHANISTAN
INL said half of Afghan farmers raising opium poppies in today’s Afghanistan began after 2001, making efforts by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to offer alternative crops an important contribution to Afghanistan’s overall counternarcotics strategy.
Since 80 percent of Afghans are engaged in agriculture, USAID programs have reduced pressure to cultivate opium poppies by encouraging the return of commercial farming with training, seeds and fertilizer; repairing war-damaged roads and irrigation systems; and helping develop new food-processing plants and markets for legal fruit, vegetable and orchard crops.
“With an increased water supply to more than 494,000 hectares of land and the introduction of better seed varieties, farmers can once again harvest the wheat, grapes, and pomegranates that were once legendary in this country,” says a recent USAID progress report from Afghanistan.
Livestock are also an important part of rural Afghan life, and USAID has trained thousands of area residents in veterinary medicine, allowing them to form more than 400 regional field teams allowing farmers across the country to expand their business and better safeguard animals from disease.
Since 2001, USAID has extended more than 28,000 loans, allowing Afghans to restart farms and open new businesses. USAID is also a leading contributor to the United Nations Development Programme’s Good Performers’ Initiative, which provides additional development funds to provinces that stay free of opium poppies.
“USAID helps Afghans become more self-sufficient while increasing agricultural productivity,” says the report.
For more on the International Conference in Support of Afghanistan, see the French Foreign Ministry’s Web site. The site hosts the Afghanistan National Development Strategy, a 288-page PDF file.
