Opium's Threat to Afghanistan Second Only to Terrorism
14 August 2007
Sustainable agriculture, agribusiness key to economic success
Washington -- Opium production is second only to terrorism as a threat to the economic development of Afghanistan, say U.S. officials.
Opium, like terror, is a dead end for the Afghan people, according to John Walters, director of the President’s Office of National Drug Control Policy. At an August 9 special briefing at the State Department, Walters said that although more than 90 percent of the world’s opium is grown in Afghanistan, most Afghans never see any of the profits generated by this illicit crop.
Those who drive the illegal opium industry, Walters said, “are the landowners, who force sharecroppers to grow poppy, rather than licit agricultural products.”
The State Department estimates that in 2006, the total export value of Afghanistan’s opium was $3.1 billion, representing approximately 32 percent of the country’s total (licit and illicit) gross domestic product.
“The big money made off of opium in Afghanistan is made by the upper levels of the chain – the warlords, the traffickers, the corrupt individuals who are involved in this,” Walters said.
“The poor people of Afghanistan are not getting rich off of opium. They haven’t in the last decade,” Walters said.
FINDING ALTERNATIVE “MONEY CROPS”
But finding an alternative crop that can match the potential income of opium poppies is difficult, acknowledged Thomas Schweich, coordinator for counternarcotics and justice reform in Afghanistan and the acting assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement.
“There is no miracle crop,” Schweich said at the briefing. “There’s nothing that really will equal the income you can get from poppy.” The chief benefit of not growing the opium poppy, which is a highly labor-intensive crop, is the security of not having to deal with corrupt and violent organizations, he said.
Successful and sustainable agricultural endeavors, Walters said, require electricity, roads and market access. “It’s important,” he added, “to remember there’s a pathway to go from being a subsistence farmer to having a future for your children and your family that’s better off.”
In explaining the U.S. Counternarcotics Strategy for Afghanistan, released August 9, the officials said the United States plans to focus on high-yield crops such as fruits and nuts that come closer than other crops to replacing the income from the poppy.
The 2007 alternative development campaign, for example, with annual expenditures of $120 million to $150 million, includes short-term cash-for-work projects and comprehensive agricultural and business development projects.
According to the report, over the past few years, nonpoppy agricultural production in Afghanistan has nearly doubled, thereby increasing farmers’ incomes. The U.S. government, the report says, has paid $32 million in cash-for-work salaries for infrastructure rehabilitation resulting in the construction of 1,000 kilometers of rural roads and improved irrigation for 3 percent of Afghanistan’s arable land. More than $3 million in credit has been disbursed, and more than 100,000 farmers have been trained in improved agricultural practices.
ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Through programs administered by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), between fiscal years 2002 and 2006, more than half a million farmers across all 34 provinces in Afghanistan have received 40,000 metric tons of fertilizer and 14,000 metric tons of wheat seed. Another 278,900 farmers received vegetable seeds and fertilizers, and more than $17 million was generated in sales from the vegetable seed program.
USAID programs also helped farmers plant 1,500 hectares of apricot, apple, peach, plum persimmon and almond orchards, distributed saplings and rehabilitated neglected orchards.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has been providing advisers to Afghanistan since 2003. So far, some 33 advisers have served in the country on nine-month rotating assignments to advise farmers and government officials. Eighty percent of Afghanistan’s population is involved with farming or herding, but 23 years of war have devastated the agricultural sector.
USDA’s assistance in Afghanistan has focused on both the physical and institutional reconstruction of the country’s agricultural sector and helping the government rebuild markets while conserving natural resources. With funding from the State Department, USDA has established the Afghan Conservation Crops program, a massive, community-based employment project in which thousands of Afghans get jobs on projects for tree planting, water conservation and erosion control.
Although Afghanistan’s opium production is high, the country today “is not a place of uniformly exploding opium [production],” Walters said. In many parts of Afghanistan, he said, poppy production is declining, and some areas even have become poppy free.
“But in the areas, particularly where there is less secure control, the poppy cultivation has grown dramatically,” Walters acknowledged, condemning the opium trade as “the economic development program of the terrorists and the criminals.”
For more information, see the Web sites on Afghanistan by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service, and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
More information on the Office National Drug Control Policy is available on its Web site.
The full text of the U.S. Counternarcotics Strategy for Afghanistan and a transcript of the August 9 briefing are available on the State Department Web site.
For more information on U.S. policy, see Rebuilding Afghanistan.
(USINFO is produced by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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