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Poppies bloom across Afghanistan as drought eases
LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan, April 18, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – A vast field of
towering white poppies sways gently in the breeze, silky petals sometimes
tumbling to the ground, a visible marker of the resilience of Afghanistan’s
lucrative opium trade.
The sight of a seemingly endless expanse of opium-producing flowers is
common across rural Afghanistan, but this farm is in the centre of
government-controlled Lashkar Gah city — the capital of Helmand province.
In a field AFP visited this month, workers were scoring grooves into the
plants’ bulbous seed pods from which the raw, milky-white opium oozes.
“We know it is harmful but we have no other way to earn money, this is the
only income for us,” labourer Mohammad Ghous told AFP.
Afghanistan is the world’s top grower of opium, and the crop accounts for
hundreds of thousands of jobs.
Farmers grow poppies with impunity, as both Taliban and government
officials often profit from the lucrative trade.
“The Taliban also don’t care — they only need their share,” said Gul
Mohammad, a poppy farmer.
Afghan opium production took a hit last year as an intense drought dried
fields and shrunk cultivation areas.
According to a UN survey, potential opium production dropped by 29 percent
in 2018 compared to the previous year.
Still, production remained near record levels — and so far this year some
farmers are seeing a rebound amid heavy rains that have poured over parts of
Afghanistan in recent weeks.
Conflict is also providing a surprising boon for the industry.
“(The) government was destroying poppy fields in previous years, but this
year due to the ongoing war they couldn’t,” Mohammad said.
Most poppy production in Afghanistan is in the Taliban-controlled southern
part.
The insurgents have long profited from poppies by taxing farmers and
traffickers, and running their own drug-making factories that turn raw opium
into morphine or heroin for export.
Excess supply in recent years has led to falling prices, but a lack of
alternative cash crops has left many Afghan farmers hooked on growing opium
poppies.
“We have been cultivating poppies for twenty years,” farmer Abdul Hadi
said.
“It is less tiring, makes a lot of money and is less demanding than growing
corn or wheat.”
International donors have spent billions of dollars on counter-narcotics
efforts in Afghanistan over the past decade, including efforts to encourage
farmers to switch to other cash crops such as saffron.
But so far, efforts to move farmers away from their lucrative but dangerous
poppies have met with little success.
BSS/AFP/SSS/1624 hrs