|
Opium msnbc Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.msnbc.com/news/662443.asphttp://www.msnbc.com/news/662443.asp
Afghan farmers
resume planting
poppies for heroin
With Taliban gone, so is
enforcement of poppy ban
SORKHUD, Afghanistan, Nov. 24 — Gul Haidar smiled
as he sifted some seeds through his fingers,
happy he had planted the one crop that should
ensure his family’s welfare next year — opium
poppies. In pencil-thin, spiraling furrows dug
with a homemade plow pulled by oxen, Haidar
has sown the tiny, pale specks that will yield
flowers in four months. When the petals fall,
buyers will come for the seed pods and its opium
resin.
Afghanistan was once
the world’s largest
opium producer,
enough to supply 75
percent of the world’s
heroin, according to
the U.N. Drug
Control Program.
THE PASHTO-speaking farmer expects to triple what
he had made from the winter wheat he had planted the last
three seasons.
With the Taliban no longer around to enforce a
three-year ban on poppy-growing, hundreds of farmers
near the eastern city of Jalalabad — their appetite for profit
sharpened by years of drought and hardship — have
resumed planting what they call “narcotic.”
“We don’t have much water, so with narcotic we make
more money to offset the problem of the drought,” Haidar
said. “If you water twice a year, narcotic will do very well,
but with wheat, you have to water nine times.”
SEEDS HIDDEN NO MORE
Miles of flat fields surround Jalalabad, with barren
desert mountains visible in the distance. Hundreds of miles
of irrigation canals funnel runoff from mountain springs and
creeks onto the fields, but after three years without rain,
water is precious.
The 75-year-old Haidar, who lives in a mud house, has
rented his 750 acres from a wealthy Afghan for the past
half-century.
Before the Taliban ban, he grew poppies almost
exclusively. During the past three years, he switched to
wheat rather than risk imprisonment. But Haidar had
stashed a bag of poppy seeds — and brought them out
when the Taliban fled Jalalabad this month, in time for
planting season.
Now he has sown 250 acres of poppies, which he said
will yield 650 pounds of opium.
“It will be just enough to live,” Haidar said. “I have a
family of 10, so I work just to live, eat and for clothes.”
Afghanistan was once the world’s largest opium
producer, enough to supply 75 percent of the world’s
heroin, according to the U.N. Drug Control Program.
Farmers produced 3,611 tons from the 1999 planting.
But after a ruthless Taliban crackdown, the crop in 2000
dropped to 204 tons, the agency said in July.
Most of the opium is exported and is rarely used
locally.
SENT TO PAKISTAN
Mujahed, a 42-year-old farmer who uses only one
name, said buyers give him an advance so that he can buy
fertilizer and survive until the crop comes in. They return
during the annual harvest to buy his seed pods and take the
opium to Pakistan, where, he says, “they make the stuff that
is very bad.”
“But we don’t know about the advantages or
disadvantages for other people,” Mujahed said. “I don’t
know what they do with it. ... For me, there are a lot of
advantages over wheat.”
The U.N. drug program spent years working with the
Taliban and aid agencies to discourage poppy growing and
encourage wheat production. But farmers outside Jalalabad
said they never saw any of the aid money that was funneled
through the Taliban.
“The Westerners, when they want to help us, they
should put the aid in our hands, not give it to the leaders,”
Mujahed said, adding that he would stop growing poppies if
given an alternative.
But Kasim, a 65-year-old white bearded farmer, was
less sympathetic.
“Our life is really very difficult, because we can’t grow
wheat and still survive,” he said. “We need to grow
narcotic, even if it is not fair to the rest of the world.”
|
|
