- Sayed Ali welcomed the fall of the Taliban, but the new
political and social freedoms now on offer mean little to the
poverty-stricken
Afghan farmer. What is important is that he can grow opium poppies again
- he has already planted his first crop.
-
- In the small mud-brick village of Chinar Khalia, near
the eastern city of Jalalabad, Ali and other local farmers are now looking
forward to a bumper harvest around mid-April. The Taliban ban on
poppy-growing,
which slashed Afghan opium production by 94 per cent last year, is over.
And the impact on the West will be huge - 90 per cent of Europe's heroin
comes from opium grown in Afghanistan.
-
- 'The Taliban order on poppy-growing was false,' Ali said.
'It hurt many farmers that they could not grow poppies. Now I will earn
money again.'
-
- But the wrinkled old farmer, whose leathery skin has
been baked nut-brown after a lifetime in the fields, is not the only one
set to cash in. The new warlords, who have replaced the Taliban across
large swaths of Afghanistan, will earn millions of dollars too. The
Northern
Alliance has always indulged in opium production, but now it has captured
some of the richest opium-growing lands in the country.
-
- Of Afghanistan's 29 provinces, 10 grow poppies. Of these
the richest are Helmand in the south, still under Taliban control, and
Nangrahar in the east, which has fallen to local warlords. With massive
potential riches from opium at stake, the province is experiencing fierce
factional fighting.
-
- Ali expects the new rulers of the province to encourage
him to grow as much opium as possible. 'Before the ban the government used
to collect taxes on my poppies, now the warlords will collect them. We
will have no problems from them,' he said.
-
- Opium-growing has a long history in Afghanistan, a
tradition
shattered by last year's sudden Taliban ban on poppy planting after several
years of unofficial tolerance and profit from the crop. 'Last year was
the first time in 50 years that poppies had not been grown in my village,'
Ali said.
-
- During the ban the only source of poppy production was
territory held by the Northern Alliance. It tripled its production. In
the high valleys of Badakhshan - an area controlled by troops loyal to
the former President Burhannudin Rabbani - the number of hectares planted
last year jumped from 2,458 to 6,342. Alliance fields accounted for 83
per cent of total Afghan production of 185 tonnes of opium during the
ban.
-
- Now that the Alliance has captured such rich
poppy-growing
areas as Nangrahar, production is set to rocket. Helmand, too, is being
replanted by its Taliban rulers, who have abandoned their anti-opium stance
and want to cash in on their remaining sources of revenue.
-
- Western and Pakistani officials fear that, within a year
or two, Afghanistan could again reach its peak production figures of 60,000
hectares of poppies producing 2,800 tonnes of opium - more than half the
world's output.
-
- Alliance factions and other warlords deny benefiting
from opium production, but it is an open secret that nearly all tolerate
it. Most are happy just to cream off the taxes, but others have been more
directly involved. Hazrat Ali, one of the new warlords in control in
Nangrahar,
ran Jalalabad airport in the mid-Nineties at a time when weekly flights
to India and the Gulf carried huge amounts of opium to Western markets.
During the war against the Russians, the huge and illicit drugs trade
nurtured
by the mujahideen was ignored and tolerated by the CIA and other Western
intelligence agencies in return for their commitment to fight the Soviet
Union.
-
- Now, with the Taliban ban on poppy- growing lifted, it
would appear that Afghanistan is facing a return to those days. The main
Nangrahar opium bazaar of Ghani Khel has reopened for business. Afghan
opium traders arriving in the Pakistani city of Peshawar claim 100 of the
market's 300 stalls now sell opium blocks stockpiled during the ban. The
same is true of Kandahar, where the city's main opium bazaar escaped the
US bombing.
-
- 'All our evidence is consistent. They are replanting
in a major way,' said Bernard Frahi of the United Nations Office for Drug
Control and Crime Prevention located in Islamabad.
-
- For Afghan farmers it is a simple choice. A farmer can
earn £6,000 for a hectare of opium, compared to just £34 for
wheat.
-
- Ali knows opium produces heroin and disapproves of drug
use, but he has a family of 14 to feed and his land has been gripped by
three years of drought. 'I am poor and need money for clothes and food.
Perhaps if Afghanistan becomes rich and there is peace, I will not need
to grow poppies,' he said.
-
- In the quiet Peshawar suburb of University Town, nestled
between the offices of Western aid agencies, a crowd gathers each morning
outside a forbidding steel gate. Inside, the roof of a sprawling mansion
can be seen. The beggars are here for alms. The man who lives here is
Peshawar's
most powerful drugs baron and the poor know he can afford to be generous.
Other large houses dotted around Peshawar tell the same story. Locals refer
to them as 'the houses that drugs built'. Peshawar lies on the main
smuggling
route south. It was also the home of the Afghan opposition during Soviet
and Taliban rule.
-
- In the lawless Pashtun tribal areas just outside the
city limits, opium is sold openly. It is easy, although illegal, to buy.
In a shop on the main road to Afghanistan, 26-year-old Imran cuts off a
50g piece of sticky, dark brown opium resin, known as tor . It costs just
£7.
-
- Foreigners are not allowed here, but it is just a short
drive over the tribal boundary past police guards who pay no attention
to the traffic. On the wall behind Imran hang a Kalashnikov machine gun
and a shotgun - a sign of the dangers of the drugs trade. But business
will soon be good, he says. The Northern Alliance warlords will see to
that. 'They would be stupid to try and ban the poppies. They make so much
money.'
-
- It is estimated that when production picks up, about
one million Afghan farmers will earn £70 million from growing
poppies.
That is a huge industry in a country with little other obvious sources
of foreign money exchange.
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