Taleban Wipes out Afghanistan's Opium Production
Jim Teeple
Jalalabad
8 Apr 2001 21:23 UTC

U.N. drug control officials say Taleban authorities in Afghanistan have wiped out the country's opium crop - the largest such crop in the world. U.N. officials say the action is unprecedented, and Afghanistan's former poppy farmers need urgent assistance to help them make the transition to farming legitimate crops. That transition is already well underway, but many Afghan farmers think giving up poppy farming will mean a harder life.

Digging an irrigation ditch in the hot sun is not easy work. For 56-year-old Jamroz, who like many Afghans goes by one name, the work is backbreaking. It is also something he says he is not used to doing.

Until recently Jamroz did not have to worry too much about constantly irrigating his fields. That is because until recently Jamroz grew opium poppies. Poppies are an ideal crop for an aging farmer - they do not require much water. The only real work involved in farming poppies comes when it is time to scrape the raw opium gum off the plant.

Farmers like Jamroz have been growing poppies in the shadows of the Black Mountains in eastern Afghanistan since before Alexander the Great passed this way more than 2,000 years ago. But they no longer do. Last year, Taleban authorities told them to stop. Now, Jamroz and his neighbors plant wheat and onions in their fields.

Surveying his fields, Jamroz says he willingly switched to growing wheat, but his new crop has failed, due to the worst drought to strike Afghanistan in decades. He says Taleban authorities promised he would receive international aid to compensate for the loss of his poppy income, but so far none has come.

Jamroz stopped growing opium poppies last year, after the Taleban's supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar banned poppy farming. The Islamic leader backed up the ban with a religious edict declaring poppy farming to be un-Islamic.

Mullah Amir Mohammed Haqqani is the senior Taleban official in charge of poppy eradication efforts in eastern Afghanistan. Working out of an office in the city of Jalalabad, in Afghanistan's Nangahar province, Mullah Haqqani says he has successfully eliminated poppy farming in the region.

Mullah Haqqani says nearly everybody responded positively to Mullah Omar's edict. He says there were a few farmers - maybe about 5 percent of the total - who did not want to go along, but they were eventually persuaded to join their neighbors after mediation by religious leaders and elders in their communities.

Since the Taleban took control of most of Afghanistan, international drug control officials have accused the Islamic hard-liners of being involved in the drug trade, and of using their profits to fund military campaigns. This is something Taleban authorities vehemently deny. The United Nations has imposed sanctions on Afghanistan's Taleban leadership for their refusal to hand over accused terrorist Osama bin Laden.

Some drug control experts also say it is still unclear how much opium was stockpiled inside Afghanistan - from previous crops - and it is premature to say opium production has been wiped out.

But Bernard Frahi, head of the U.N. drug control program for Pakistan and Afghanistan, applauds what the Taleban has accomplished in recent months - eliminating this year's opium crop and wiping out 3,500 tons of opium production - or 75 percent of the global crop.

"It is an unprecedented event - we have to recognize that - particularly when it comes from authorities ruling a country - even if they are de facto authorities - it is almost the first time this has happened," he said.

Many Afghans say their success in eliminating this year's poppy crop is not widely known in many western capitals where addicts use the final product of the opium poppy - heroin. Sher Mohammed Abbas Stanakzai is the Taleban deputy minister for public health in Kabul. He says, "If the same action would have been taken by any other nation or country I think the whole world have appreciated it at least, and they would have supported that nation. But in our case this was not even appreciated and nobody has mentioned has mention it. Anyway whatever we have done we have done for the benefit of our own people - it was our own decision and we have done it."

Taleban officials and former poppy farmers in Afghanistan say wiping out the opium crop does not come without a price. They say the international community should step in with aid to help the farmers. But Taleban authorities say even if no aid comes, they will not allow Afghanistan's farmers to go back to cultivating opium poppies. They say the religious edict banning poppy farming is permanent, and opium will never again be harvested in the parts of Afghanistan they control.