Trying new crops in Afghaistan

NY Times:

As the new planting season for opium poppy draws near, the governor of Helmand, Afghanistan’s largest poppy-producing province, says that this year he is determined to beat the illicit crop that is a major source of money for drug lords and insurgents alike.

To do that, the governor, Gulab Mangal, says he plans to try something that has worked in more peaceful parts of Afghanistan, but which remains untested in lawless Helmand. He hopes to persuade farmers not to plant poppy at all, rather than eradicating the crop once it has already been planted, a policy he blames for sowing greater strife in Helmand.

Mr. Mangal’s solution may seem easy enough, but the task before him is formidable. He says it will take new seeds for farmers, new roads to get their legal crops to the market, reconstruction money, strict enforcement of laws against poppy growing and, perhaps most difficult of all, the elimination of the official corruption that has fueled the drug trade.

So far, Mr. Mangal has secured more than $8 million from the United States and Britain for seeds and fertilizer for 26,000 farmers, as well as for a public information campaign to let farmers know of his plans. But just weeks before the planting season, he was still fretting that they would not arrive in time.

“Four months ago I raised my voice, but we have been delayed by bureaucracy,” he said. “We have to get to the farmers within one month.”

Helmand is the most extreme example of Afghanistan’s embattled state, in which the drug trade has become a major part of how the Taliban keep their insurgency running. The director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Antonio Maria Costa, estimated this year that the Taliban earned some $100 million from the opium trade in 2007.

In Helmand, the Taliban insurgency is strongest and the poppy crop is the largest, and the insurgents and powerful drug smugglers feed off and protect one another.

The drug business has developed from poppy growing to include the much more lucrative refining and smuggling of heroin. One of the most fertile regions of Afghanistan, Helmand produces some 50 percent of Afghanistan’s poppy crop. If it were a country, it would lead the world in opium poppy production all by itself.

The population, caught among the insurgents, drug lords and foreign forces, is deeply suspicious and often openly hostile to foreign forces.

Five districts of 13 are outside government hands and controlled by the insurgents, and three more districts have only a token government presence and foreign troops in the district centers.

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He said he was determined to eliminate what he called “endemic internal corruption” and to accelerate the delivery of reconstruction money.

“In my view it is better to provide everything before the planting season — public awareness that growing poppy is punishable under the Constitution, and that with the seeds, there comes an obligation not to grow poppy,” he said.

“We should also let them know that if they grow poppy, they will face serious enforcement of the law,” he said.

If all that can be done, he believes that people will cooperate. Many were growing poppy often under duress from landlords and the Taliban, he said, and this year many found themselves short of flour as wheat prices skyrocketed.

The farmers remain poor, while the smugglers make most of the profit. Meanwhile local addiction rates are soaring, he added.

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It is the latter that gives this program the potential for success. With the current market for food, the farmers should get more for legitimate crops which would mean that Afghanistan would not be living on the brink of famine constantly also.

If this program is successful it would mean both a logistical and strategic defeat for the Taliban and make it more difficult for them to sustain their war effort. It could be more important than our military efforts.