TALIBAN REAP REWARDS OF AFGHANISTAN'S POPPY HARVEST

With Afghan officials predicting a 'dark future,' many poor farmers
are faced with little choice but to tend their crops of opium poppies
that fuels the insurgency, writes Jonathan Fowlie in Kandahar,
Afghanistan.

Jonathan Fowlie
The Ottawa Citizen

The fields of southern Afghanistan are once again alive with poppies
and, once again, the forces charged with keeping the controversial
crop out of the ground can't seem to do a thing about it.

Millions of brilliant red, white and yellow flowers bob in the gentle
spring wind, promising a bumper crop of heroin -- possibly
Afghanistan's largest -- will be ready for sale on the streets of
Europe and North America by fall.

In a report finalized this week, and obtained by CanWest News Service,
the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said that while
poppy eradication in Afghanistan has increased threefold over this
time last year, the amount of crop left in the villages for harvest
after eradication is also notably on the rise.

The report found that eradication teams are facing attack more than
ever, with 16 people being killed in related violence this season,
several others injured and an unspecified number of eradication
tractors being burned.

In an interview this week, a spokesman for the Afghan
counter-narcotics ministry touted the 15,509 hectares of poppy fields
the UN report had confirmed to have been eradicated this year, but
said it is too early to estimate the size of this year's harvest.

"At this moment, we are still in the process of doing the survey,"
said Zalmay Afzali.

Others did not need to wait, saying unequivocally that poppy
production is on the rise, and explaining the increase is a direct
indication that the people of Afghanistan have lost faith in their
government.

"The people have decided the government is not able to solve the basic
problems so they have decided to grow poppies," said Col. Mohammad
Hussain Andiwall, a liaison between the Afghan Ministry of the
Interior and the Canadian provincial reconstruction team in Kandahar.

"For five years, the government couldn't provide clinics, schools,
potable water and other social programs," he added. "People have heard
lots and not seen anything."

Haji Mohammed Eisah Khan, an influential tribal chief and former high
court judge who quit because he could not tolerate corruption, agreed.

"Due to the weakness of the government, the Taliban has got a chance
to come again and to get stronger," the tribal chief told CanWest News
Service this week. "The government has made promises to the people,
but is doing nothing."

In the rolling desert hills that mark the border between Kandahar and
Helmand -- two of Afghanistan's three largest poppy producing
provinces -- farmer Mohammed Khan is a living picture of this sentiment.

With his soft voice, gentle nature and paucity of material
possessions, Mr. Khan is among the last people you would expect to
find breaking his back to help produce the world's largest supply of
opium, but this year, as in the past, Mr. Khan has spent endless hours
farming a poppy patch roughly the size of a football field to do just
that.

"These poppies are all for my children," he said in a recent
interview, explaining that he farms poppies mostly so he can make the
estimated $6,500 they bring him each year, but also because the
Taliban demand that he do so.

"We don't have any power to fight with them," he said of the Taliban,
explaining the last time they came to his farm they arrived as a
heavily armed group of about 50 men, coming to ensure he would grow
the poppies that would help fund their insurgency.

"I know you have a lot of difficulty reporting the Taliban because of
the personal risk, but the Taliban slows down progress," Canadian
Forces Lieut. Ben Rogerson told Mr. Khan during a recent conversation,
urging him to use local authorities to fight back.

"They (the Taliban) are working against the government of Afghanistan
and against development," he said. "We need you to take that risk to
help us so we can build the country and there won't be a problem anymore."

Mr. Khan did not seem convinced.

"If we tell you guys, the Taliban will take our wives and our
daughters," he said. "They are Muslim, but they are not working like
Muslim people."

And so, with little faith his now five-year-old government can protect
him, or even help him make anywhere close to the same amount of money
doing anything else, Mr. Khan has again joined the thousands of other
peasant farmers across the country in growing poppies, and in
supporting the Taliban.

Last year alone, the UNODC found that Afghanistan had exported an
estimated $3.1 billion U.S. worth of opium, or about 92 per cent of
the global supply. The UN agency further estimated the country's
farmers had received only $760 million of that, with an average family
getting about $1,700 U.S. Assumably, the rest went to drug lords,
smugglers, insurgents and corrupt officials.

"Poppy is feeding the enemy. It is also creating a distance between
the people and their government," said Col. Andiwall. "The situation
is getting worse, not better."

Back in Kandahar City, Col. Andiwall and Mr. Khan agreed the solution
to the poppy problem is not going to come easily, although they said
finding one is absolutely crucial.

For Col. Andiwall, the path will be through providing real
alternatives for farmers.

Mr. Khan agreed, saying he thinks 90 per cent of the Taliban fighters
in Afghanistan right now are poor farmers who have no other option but
to take up arms.

What's more, they both added, the security situation is likely to get
worse now that the poppy harvest is coming to an end.

"I anticipate a dark future for this area," said Col. Andiwall,
agreeing that the conflict could intensify in the coming days once the
harvest is complete.

"We can't provide alternative livelihoods for farmers, we can't stop
government officials from bribes and we can't stop people with links
to poppy smuggling," he added.

"How can you anticipate a good future?"

When she was in Kandahar last month, Minister of International
Co-operation Josee Verner said the Can-adian government was trying to
effect change through the Canadian International Development Agency.

"What we want to do is offer an alternative to farmers," she told
reporters.

"We invested, I think, close to $30 million this year to offer the
opportunity to the farmers to have the alternatives to the poppy," she
added, explaining the money goes to everything from irrigation to
distribution of different seeds.

At the Afghan counter-narcotics ministry, however, Mr. Afzali said
this is not enough.

"I believe the international community should do more to help not only
with eradication but to equip and train the police," he said.

"This is the world's problem and the international community should
have to do more to remove this problem from Afghanistan."