CANADIAN SOLDIERS RECEIVE POPPY PROPOSAL

Afghanistan Drug Trade: Farmers Say They Won't Grow Flower Next Year
- -- If They Can Keep Current Crop

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - A large number of Afghan poppy farmers have
handed Canadian soldiers an unusual offer, pledging not to grow the
illicit flowers next year if they are allowed to harvest their poppy
crop this year with no interference from Afghan officials intent on
smashing the country's opium trade.

More than 15 village elders, representing hundreds of local farmers,
recently made the plea to soldiers at Canada's remote firebase near
the town of Gombad, in the rugged countryside north of Kandahar.

"They're afraid of the government ploughing up their fields," said
Major Kirk Gallinger, who commands a company of Edmonton-based troops
trying to fight the Taliban and bring security to the district around Gombad.

"They came and asked us to support them, and to pass on a request to
the [Afghan] government not to eradicate their crops this year. In
return, they'll pledge not to grow any poppies next year," he said.

The farmers' plea illustrates the awkward and dangerous position
Canadian soldiers find themselves in this spring, as Afghanistan's
underground poppy harvest approaches.

Canada officially supports programs to tear out poppy fields and
eradicate the illegal opium trade. Ottawa is also funding efforts to
find alternative crops for poppy farmers. At the same time, Canadian
troops on the ground are trying to bring peace to rural areas and win
the loyalties of Afghan farmers, telling them the Canadian army
itself has nothing to do with eradicating their crops.

"We are caught in the middle," Maj. Gallinger said. "Soldiers realize
the effect poppy growing has on Afghanistan and that opium has in the
world. We understand the importance of the eradication program.

"But there's also an immediate concern that the farmers might take up
weapons against us [if soldiers are seen to support poppy
eradication] and we're also sympathetic with the farmers. Mostly
they're trying to earn an income to put food on their table."

Maj. Gallinger did pass the farmers' request to a local government
official last week, but he said no one believes the farmers will
uphold their pledge not to grow poppies next year in return for a
grace period this year.

"I'm afraid that might be wishful thinking," he said.

Poppy growing is at the heart of Afghanistan's problems. An estimated
4,000 tonnes of opium is smuggled out of the country every year. The
US$3-billion trade is controlled exclusively by mafia-style drug
barons, many of them connected to the Taliban insurgency.

Although the U.S.-led coalition and the fledgling Afghan government
have been working to undermine the poppy business since 2002, vast
fields are still cultivated each spring across southern Afghanistan,
turning biscuit-brown valleys into green-and-lavender narcotics pasture lands.

"Flying over it, it's like flying over the tulip lands in Holland," a
senior British officer based at Kandahar Airfield who did not want to
be identified said in a recent interview.

In the poor and broken streets of Kandahar city, the riches of the
drug trade are flaunted only blocks from the Provincial
Reconstruction Team site, the base from which Canadian soldiers run
security patrols through the city.

"See those new houses?" said an Afghan driver while escorting a
CanWest News reporter through the city one day. "Those belong to the
drug guys," he said, pointing to several new and glittering mansions
rising up behind razor-wire fences.

Afghan authorities are trying to fight the opium trade at its roots
- -- through programs funded by the United States and Britain -- in
which contractors travel to villages with tractors, ripping up the
poppy fields.

However, the Senlis Council, an international security think-tank,
issued a report this month saying the forced eradication of
Afghanistan's poppy crops is fuelling the power of the Taliban in
southern villages.

It said disgruntled farmers join the insurgency out of anger at
having their crops ploughed under. Others take up arms after losing
their poppy-based livelihoods and becoming enslaved to the Taliban,
which frequently pay farmers in advance for their poppy harvest.

Brigadier-General David Fraser, the Canadian commander of coalition
forces in the south, said the opium trade must be destroyed and that
Canadian forces do support the anti-poppy work of the national
government in Kabul.

"Poppies will kill this country if left to go unchecked," he said in
a recent interview.

But Brig.-Gen. Fraser is equally adamant that "we're not here to do
poppy eradication. That's not our job."

He said it is a tough distinction for soldiers to finesse on the
ground, in the poppy-dependent villages where Canada is trying to win
friends and where most Afghans see the soldiers for what they are --
allies of the national government.

"From the people's point of view, it's hard for them to discern
between one group that's doing poppy eradication and another group
that's here to support Afghans and deal with the terrorist threat.
They don't see the distinction, and it's the job of every soldier on
the ground, every day, to make sure he explains it to them."

In distancing themselves from poppy eradication, could Canada's
military be accused of duplicity in the matter?

"Hey, duplicity is a reality," said the British officer in Kandahar
who did not want to be identified. "We're not arguing about some
libertarian, lovely sort of thing here. This isn't Ottawa. This is
Afghanistan, and this is realpolitik."