DON'T ENCOURAGE POPPY PRODUCTION IN AFGHANISTAN

Re: A B.C. Lawyer Who Needs Bodyguards, Jan. 2.

As a Canadian living and working in Kandahar, Afghanistan, I feel
compelled to comment on this article and offer another perspective on
Afghanistan's opium trade.

My focus here is on building consent among farmers, and those that
influence them, on opposing poppy cultivation. While poppy eradication
has proven to be a popular topic for journalists, it is by no means
the preferred or dominant means of reducing heroin production in
Afghanistan. In fact, intervening and destroying farmers' crops is a
last resort. Far more important is the provision of "alternative
livelihoods" to farmers.

It is of course unrealistic to expect poppy farming to disappear
overnight. The goal is to effect a gradual reduction.

The idea of promoting a licit opium economy in Afghanistan is,
therefore, flawed. The medical market for opium derivatives is a
tightly controlled industry which produces relatively small amounts.
The amounts that would be produced here would so quickly flood the
market and cause the price to plummet that farmers would return to the
black market.

In the words of President Hamid Karzai, "The opium poppy represents
the single greatest challenge to the long term security, development
and effective governance of Afghanistan." The drug trade dominates the
economy and promotes a vested interest in instability and corruption
at the highest level.

These effects of poppy cultivation only relate to the "supply side." I
don't think I need to remind you of the effects on countries like
Canada of the demand side of the equation. Any solution to the problem
that looks at maintaining poppy production in Afghanistan would have
profoundly negative effects here and abroad.

Bert Tatham, Kandahar, Afghanistan.