Afghanistan’s opium production, nearly wiped out
by the fundamentalist Taliban, is in the increase as the country
slips out of control. - Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy
The ironies of Afghan opium production.
Driven by war, poverty and chaos, Afghanistan’s opium
production in the wake of the ouster of the Taliban regime
is dramatically increasing and seems to be the only avenue
by which many Afghans can make a living. Indeed, in a country
already characterized by a tortured landscape and harsh climatic
conditions, let alone generations of war, the commercial production
of opium has been the only means of subsistence available
for many peasants in eastern Afghanistan.
Consecutive years of drought have made matters worse. The
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) recently asserted
that since 1978, when the country was on the verge of attaining
food self-sufficiency, irrigated surfaces have been cut in
half. Arable lands, which before the war corresponded to only
12 percent of the country’s total area, fell by another
37 percent during the 1990s. Furthermore, Afghanistan certainly
holds an unfortunate record as the world’s most-mined
country. The United Nations estimates that some 700 sq km
are contaminated by various unexploded ordnances which, according
to the World Bank, take a toll of some 500 victims a month,
making any return to the agricultural fields particularly
dangerous.
Continuing war has also contributed to the prolonged lack
of water for agriculture, destroying traditional irrigation
channels and displacing significant segments of the population.
Afghanistan’s renowned orchards and the vineyards of
the Shomali plain have virtually vanished.
As a result, of the food crops now produced in Afghanistan,
wheat, the least water-demanding, is the most favored. But
the FAO estimates that, in a country where food shortages
are persistent and where the threat of famine is recurrent,
wheat acreage has decreased by 10 percent since the fall of
the Taliban in December 2001 in the face of profit from the
opium poppy.
Under such conditions the World Bank estimates that 7 million
people, a third of the population, suffered from hunger in
2001, partly because of the drought that prevailed in 2000
and 2001 and threatened the re-establishment of the cereal
production that the Taliban regime brought back between 1996
and 1999. By 1998, cereal production had been restored to
pre-war levels and livestock were increasing again. By the
2000-2001 drought, however, cereal production had declined
by 50 percent and almost 60 percent of the cattle had disappeared.
However, in 2002, and owing to less difficult climatic conditions,
Afghanistan produced some 3.6 million tonnes of wheat, 82
percent more than in 2001 but still 4 percent less than in
2000.
As for the opium harvest, it once again literally exploded,
increasing by 1,400 percent between 2001 and 2002.
Recent price trends for Afghan opium.
The July 2000 edict of Mullah Omar, the ousted supreme head
of the Taliban and Commander of the Faithful, proscribed opium
poppy cultivation and forced the 2001 harvest to 185 tonnes,
an all-time low. That figure was all the more impressive since
the country had broken a world record in 1999 when it produced
4,600 tonnes, followed by a huge 3,300 tonnes in 2000.
The farm-gate price before the edict averaged US$30 per kilogram
of fresh Afghan opium (as opposed to dry opium, which is lighter).
In March 2001, during the purchasing season for recently collected
opium, the average farm-gate price suddenly reached US$700,
reflecting the shortage engineered by the Taliban. After the
Sept.11, 2001 attacks in the United States, traffickers and
local traders, rightly fearing American reprisals against
both the Taliban and Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda, accelerated
the sale of the 2,900 tonnes of opium that the United Nations
then estimated to be stored in the north of the country.
Right after Sept.11, one kilogram of Afghan opium brought
only US$95 to US$120, far below the price caused by the Taliban-driven
shortages. However, just before American military intervention
materialized in Afghanistan on October 7, 2001, the price
skyrocketed, reaching US$500 per kilogram. Following the Enduring
Freedom operation and its air strikes, opium lost some 40
percent of its farm-gate value, an indication of the sensitivity
of opium to market contingencies. Later, in 2002, and despite
a new increase in Afghan production, with the harvest estimated
at 3,400 tonnes, prices reached US$600 per kilogram, something
that the United Nations, which estimates production and records
price fluctuations, has been unable to explain.
Opium production and politico-territorial evolution.
The Afghan geopolitical scene is highly complex, and even
more so when it comes to illicit drugs. To grasp illicit production
and trade, one has to take into consideration the role that
the Taliban played in condoning the opium economy by taxing
both harvest and trade. This taxation was actually severely
denounced in the 1999 International Narcotics Control Board
report. However, such taxation was in accordance with Islamic
principles known as zakat and usher has indeed been acknowledged
by the Taliban authorities themselves.
In 1997, the assistant director of the Pashtani Tjarati Bank,
Taliban’s central bank in their Kandahari stronghold,
was quoted as saying that “a landowner must pay 10 percent
of whatever amount he makes on his crops.” Opium merchants
also have to pay a 2.5 percent tax to the Taliban, as they,
like any other producers, did to other rulers and regimes.
These taxes are well known and are Islamic practices that
predate the Taliban. Zakat, or purification, is the third
pillar of Islam and, as a tax levied on most assets, concerns
every Muslim. Once levied it is redistributed to the poor,
the rulers, and the holy fighters of the jihad. Usher, or
tithe, is the other Islamic tax that is collected on raw agricultural
products. Half goes to the poor, with the other half split
between the local mullahs and the rulers, at that time the
Taliban.
Thus, by levying these taxes the Taliban were doing nothing
more than profiting on an economic system of production established
prior to their arrival on the Afghan political scene. It is
easy to see how the Taliban, then the rulers of about 85 percent
of the country and controlling up to 96 percent of its poppy
fields, benefited from these taxes, which are inherent to
the Islamic law, or sharia, that they enforced.
To better understand the political economy of the opium poppy
in Afghanistan, it is also essential to mention the role in
the opium economy that was then held by the United Front (or
Northern Alliance) led by the late Ahmed Shah Massoud, assassinated
on Sept 7, 2001 in his Panjsher Valley stronghold. It has
been reported that the United Front was also levying taxes
on opium, which would make sense considering that its own
considerable war effort required significant funding.
The United Front outlawed poppy cultivation and heroin manufacture
in June 1999, a year before the Taliban issued their own ban.
However, the United Front clearly failed to enforce the ban
in their areas, while the Taliban impressively and unexpectedly
succeeded. Indeed, according to the United Nations Drug Control
Program (UNDCP), up to 150 tonnes of opium were most likely
collected in 2001 in the areas controlled by the United Front.
These areas, being close to Tajikistan, then served, and
still do, as an extremely convenient springboard to export
opiates to Central Asia and Russia. In fact, in the United
Front-held Badakhshan in northeastern Afghanistan, poppy-sown
surfaces were estimated to have multiplied by 2.5 times between
2000 and 2001, leading to the bountiful 2001 harvest.
That same year, only 35 tonnes of opium were estimated to
have been collected in Taliban-held areas. In one year, Mullah
Omar’s edict cut production spectacularly, from 3,300
tonnes in 2000. The Taliban nearly rooted out opium production
in the areas under their control in contrast to the United
Front-held areas.
But the determination shown by the Taliban in 2000 to drastically
reduce opium production did not seem to last long since as
of the beginning of September 2001 – and before the
9/11 attacks – the Taliban most likely authorized the
Afghan peasants to sow opium poppies again. Or, at the very
least, they were thought not to have reissued their prohibition,
thus leaving the peasants one precious month to obtain the
indispensable seeds before the October sowing season.
But, on November 13, 2001, the Taliban fled from the capital
and Kabul finally awoke under the control of the United Front
troops. The Taliban nevertheless held the southern town of
Kandahar until they negotiated their surrender with the United
States on December 6, 2001, one day after the Bonn agreements
were signed and the creation of a transitory Afghan government
was decided, empowering the royalist Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun
of the Popalzai tribe.
On January 17, 2002, the Afghan transition government declared
in turn that poppy cultivation as well as the sale and consumption
of opium were altogether prohibited in Afghanistan, although
the poppies sown in the late fall of 2001 were about to bloom
and, according to the United Nations International Drug Control
Programme (UNDCP) had the potential to produce 1,900 to 2,700
tonnes of opium.
This, of course, deeply upset those of the Afghan peasants
who had traditionally borrowed important sums or benefited
from advances against takings in order to be able to feed
themselves and their families until the harvest season. In
Afghanistan, this credit system is also frequently resorted
to so as to obtain the required opium poppy seeds. It is in
this sensitive context that, on April 3, 2002, the temporary
government launched its eradication program and offered US$250
in compensation for each planted and eradicated jirib (US$1,250
per hectare).
However, the poppy growers declared that they could obtain
from US$1,700 to US$3,500 USD per jirib if they collected
their opium and sold it at market prices. The dispute between
the government and the peasants caused some disorder and even
led to armed confrontations. In April 2002, one such clash
killed 8 peasants and wounded 35 others in the Kajaki district
of Helmand province.
Despite these incidents, and others including the destruction
of tractors used for eradication by mines in Helmand province,
the UNDCP then estimated that 16,500 hectares of poppies,
a third of the total surface planted in 2001-2002, had been
destroyed within the framework of the eradication program
engaged by the transitory government (mainly in the provinces
of Helmand, Oruzgan, of Nangarhar, and Kunar).
The Afghan government also estimated that its eradication
campaign had affected more than one third of the cultivated
areas, even though many observers argued that, for various
reasons, only 10 percent had really been eradicated. In fact
it seemed that in many cases, financial compensation was pocketed
by local commanders and governors without ever reaching the
peasants. In other instances, peasants were compensated after
having only partially eradicated their opium poppy fields.
Peasants or their local governors reportedly resorted to
various other subterfuges to profit from both governmental
compensation and the sale of opium on the market. That is
actually all the more plausible when one considers that the
UNDCP then forecast that the Afghan peasants engaged in the
opium poppy economy would fetch approximately US$1.2 billion
at the farm-gate price for their forthcoming 2002 harvest,
a huge sum not easily turned down in a country as poor as
Afghanistan.
The final UNDCP estimates came in October 2002. Although
the majority of observers including the UNDCP expected production
of 2,500 tonnes, Afghanistan produced far more, perhaps as
much as 3,400 tonnes. A. M. Costa, general manager of the
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (ODC, of which the
UNDCP is part), defends the UN actions, saying the 2002 harvest
was lower than that in 1999, which was carried out under the
Taliban. The transition government of Hamid Karzai could thus
not be held responsible of this increase since the last sowing
had taken place before its empowerment and in the context
of the Taliban’s fall, a rather chaotic period.
However, even if the yields suddenly increased from 24 kg/ha
to 46 kg/ha (partly because the poppy growers further resorted
to irrigated fields) and explained part of the total augmentation,
these 3,400 tonnes were far higher than the 185 tonnes of
2001 when the last harvest was made under the Taliban.
In fact, 2002’s 3,400 tonnes nearly match the 3,300
tonnes of 2000, when the Taliban first successfully aimed
to reduce opium production following the all-time record of
4,600 tonnes of 1999.
It is now up to Hamid Karzai’s transition government
to try to progressively cut Afghanistan’s opium harvests.
Matching what the Taliban did in 2001 – with 185 tonnes
of which only 35 were produced in the zones under their control
– seems unreachable to say the least. Preliminary estimates
by the United Nations for the 2003 harvest show that while
clear efforts were made to eradicate part of the culture in
the main areas of production - Helmand, Kandahar, Oruzgan,
Nangarhar but not in Badakhshan - opium poppy was also planted
for the first time in other districts.
There is no doubt whatsoever that, in 2003, Afghanistan will
top the world’s production of opium ahead of Myanmar,
whose production dropped to 800 tonnes in 2002.
To a certain extent, the future harvests will testify to
Hamid Karzai’s political and territorial control on
his country, population, and factions. They will also make
it possible to evaluate and judge the success of Western intervention
and assistance. It is advisable however to keep in mind that
in the current context of insecurity and lack of rebuilding
and development, no drastic eradication should be implemented
as many Afghan peasants have largely invested in this economic
activity and depend on it for their very survival.
To overcome opium production in Afghanistan, the government
and the international community must not impose eradication
without implementing a broad program of alternative and integrated
development both in the regions of opium production and in
the rest of the country. Such programs must be implemented
in a progressive way and, most importantly, in stable political
and territorial conditions. Long-lasting peace combined with
political as well as economic development must be achieved
if Afghanistan is to be successfully rid of its illicit drugs
economy and war economy nexus.
Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy, PhD, is a geographer and research fellow
at CNRS in Paris. He produces www.geopium.org
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved.
Please contact content@atimes.com
for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
