PLANTING POPPIES LURES POOR FARMERS

Afghanistan Need Small Loans To Grow Wheat

An old man waits with his two sons outside of a United Nation's
distribution centre on a scorching August day in Kandahar City.

They have been enticed from the Arghandab district west of the city
by the promise of a single bag of wheat to take back to their
impoverished family. He says he arrived here at 8 a.m., but four
hours later he, along with dozens of others, still doesn't have his
wheat, and he's losing his patience.

"This seed is not for growing," he explains, "it's for eating." While
he grows corn on his farm, he says he hasn't produced enough to feed
his family.

So, it's not really surprising then when asked if he has ever grown
poppies to help supplement his income, he hesitantly admits he has.

"If my children fill their stomachs, I don't care about the poppy,"
he says, asking not to be named because of the sensitive nature of the topic.

Not only are poppies difficult to grow, requiring much weeding and
watering, but it's illegal to grow them here and drug use runs
counter to his Muslim beliefs, he says.

But finding a market for other crops and affording the seeds in
advance is beyond his means.

The opium smugglers in Kandahar, on the other hand, like everywhere
else in the country, pay upfront for the poppy, and they come to
collect the sticky opium tar afterward.

The certainty of income and ease to market has proved too much of a temptation.

"I grow the poppy to feed my family," the farmer says.

The head of the counter-narcotics efforts in Kandahar says if Canada
and its NATO allies are serious about wiping out the opium trade in
his province, they need to start providing short-term loans to
farmers before the planting season begins in the coming weeks so they
can afford to grow alternative crops this year, such as wheat.

"Our farmers have financial problems and they need things like good
seed, tractors and other farm equipment," says Gul Mohammad Shukran -
Kandahar's director of drug control. "If you can't get people to grow
wheat, then they produce poppies, and we have more addicts, crime,
and other social problems." Shukran warns if Canada and its partners
fail to provide these short-term loans, then the drug smugglers, and
the insurgents they support, will be more than happy to.

Last week, the UN released its annual survey of opium cultivation in
Afghanistan. It found opium production was down 19 per cent compared
with last year, and 18 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces are now
opium-free. That's up from 13 last year, due in part to stronger
local leadership and bad weather.

Those successes, however, were marred by some more troubling figures,
in particular for Kandahar and six other provinces in the south -
Helmand, Uruzgan, Farah Nimroz, Daykundi and Zabul.

The UN says these provinces are responsible for 98 per cent of the
opium produced in Afghanistan, and Helmand alone accounts for two-thirds.

With more than 90 per cent of world's heroin derived from Afghan
opium, it's easy to see the impact the southwest corner of the
country is having on the rest of the world, and Afghanistan itself.

"There is now a perfect overlap between zones of high risk and
regions of high opium cultivation," says Antonio Maria Costa, the
executive director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. "Since drugs
are funding insurgency, and insurgency enables drug cultivation,
insurgency and narcotics must be fought together." The UN numbers
also hide the fact the drop in opium production is largely
attributable to a drought that hit several regions in the country
this year, according to the Senlis Council, an international think
tank with offices in Kabul.

The Canadian International Development Agency is already one of the
largest donors to the Microfinance Investment Support Facility for
Afghanistan, which provides small loans - often less than $1000 - to
Afghans across the country. But Canadian officials admit hardly
anything is being done in the rural areas of Kandahar, in part
because it's still not secure enough to implement such a system.