OPIUM FLOWERS

Whilst the world was celebrating World Anti-Narcotics Day on June 27
by organising seminars and conferences with loud woes of resolve to
end the menace, in the south of Helmand province of Afghanistan Gul
Bibi (18) was being sold to the local land owner as a 'opium bride'
by her father for just a few thousand dollars. Her father was
indebted to a land owner with a promise to repay at the harvest time.
With the opium eradication drive by the government and allied forces,
his field was also destroyed, leaving him nothing to pay back the
loan. Opium flowers would continue to grow and multiply, till the
spring of poverty, violation of human rights and deterioration of
socio-economic situation of the natives would complete its interval
in Afghanistan.

Despite the fact that there is forecast for a 'shockingly high'
harvest for 2008 according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and
Crime (UNODC), anguish of the natives is magnifying without light at
the end of the tunnel. Weak governance structures and corruption has
led these menaces to stand larger than life in this 'land of unruly'.
Instead of providing relief to the people, the state has started
slipping back to a point zero and moving towards a point of no return
as the contemporary trends reflects. Much blame lies with Karzai's
'democratic' government, which has done little to put an end to such
practices and provide alternatives to the natives and try to win
hearts and minds of people.

Afghanistan is in a flux today with ranking the world's poorest of
all countries - it ranks near the bottom of the UN's human
development index (174th out of 178 countries). It is also ranked the
lowest on the human poverty index, is the largest exporter of the
illicit drugs, reaching an estimated street value of $ 60 billion.
According to the latest UNODC survey some of 3.3 million Afghans
(14.3 percent of the population) are involved in opium cultivation.
This does not include over 500,000 labourers and an unknown number of
traffickers, warlords and officials. Poppies are grown just over four
percent of Afghanistan's arable land, the value of illicit drug
income is huge, equalling over 52 percent of the country's legal GDP
in 2002 (compared with 24.4 percent for Burma/Myanmar and three
percent for Colombia).

A careful analysis of the available data shows that the government's
GDP ratio is lowest to the illicit opium income production. What is
much worst and disturbing is that opium production trend is not only
upward but outward. Hence this has not only regional but global
implications as well. As one observer once notes, "It is cheaper to
engage in illegal activity in Afghanistan than almost anywhere in the
world. However, Iraq is catching up. Having first followed
Afghanistan's lead in becoming a trans-national terrorism, Iraq is
now starting to produce poppies." An estimated of 500,000 Afghan
families support themselves by raising poppies, according to UNODC.
Last year, those growers received an estimated $ 1 billion for their
crops - about $ 2,000 per household. With at least six members in the
average family, opium growers' per capita income is rough $ 300. The
real profits go to the traffickers; their Taliban allies and the
crooked officials' who facilitate these 'merchant! s of death' to
operate with liberty.

It is also very significant to understand the effects of narcotics
trade and convergence of Afghanistan into a failed state as both are
interlinked with weak governance, corruption, shaky state building
efforts, fragile development, unstable security and counter
insurgency efforts by the allied forces. One expert refers that if
there would not be narcotics there would not be any of the Taliban.
However, narcotics and its trade is not the only one reason for the
state of chaos in Afghanistan today. It is a combination of multiple
causes and major among all is that weak state structure and Karzai
government's failure to expand its control beyond certain regions.
Karzai must realise that spitting venom for the state hosting
millions of Afghan refugees for years would not serve the purpose,
but he must put his own house in order.

In order to remove the menace from the very root, it is also very
significant for Afghanistan to create the alternative livelihoods for
farmers and people who are earlier generating their income from the
narco-trade and money. This has been part of the national counter
narcotics strategy which includes incentive scheme known as the 'Good
performance fund' set up to reward villages for moving away from
opium. Creating better infrastructure facilities like better
irrigation system, transport infrastructures to those farmers, who
grow other crops would do some good. Measurement of these sorts are
necessary because other crops often face pitfalls such as the absence
of distributors, inadequate domestic demands are few of the
impediments that were causing the weak implementation of the counter
narcotics strategy in the state.

Despite billions of dollars in foreign investment - the international
community pledged an additional $ 20 billion at a donor conference in
June - the coalition forces in Afghanistan and its government have
failed to win over the people they are trying to protect. This means
Afghanistan's gains since the fall of the Taliban are fragile and are
threatened by the insurgency, which continues to rage in the south.
The government is weak, and there is little rule of law - local
police is seen as scarcely more than 'uniformed thieves'. Opium
traffickers have a firm grip on the agricultural production of the
province, providing credit, seeds and fertiliser to farmers, who have
no other recourse than to grow the raw material for heroin - which in
turn finances the insurgency.

Afghanistan's rise as the major factor in contribution to the world's
illicit drug production is largely seen as a failure of the US
policies for the country. After the removal of the Taliban regime in
2001, the drug eradication drive has largely been failed. A major
obstacle in getting rid of opium production is the lack of
coordination among law enforcement agencies operated upon by the US
and its allies and the local warlords, whose major source of power
lies with holding opium cultivatable land. Without much of the
incentives for the farmers and workers has added of woes of the
locals, thus created a larger factor resulting in the rise of the
militancy and insurgency in the country.

Helmand is the biggest opium-producing region in the world and it is
home to a Pashtun population that has historically resisted
centralised rule. It is, says Chris Alexander, the UN's deputy
special representative in Afghanistan, "the place where the
challenges that used to be nationwide have been swept like dead
leaves into a pile." There is a need for much broader and
comprehensive counter narcotics approach that could eradicate the
menace and provide the relief to the ordinary Afghan, who expects
removal of crimes and dawn of the substantial security and
development to the land. This requires much of the efforts from
within society and the government while multifaceted policy of the
international actors requires much of the effort. If we all fail to
deliver, then it would tell little about Afghanistan but much about the world.