Story by Michelle McKenzie
Afghanistan was once a kingdom at the center of the world, a meeting point of the East and West. Caravans from many nations traveled its mountainous deserts for trade; the kingdom was prosperous. Unfortunately, outsiders saw the wealth of the kingdom and desired it for themselves. Attacked and raided for its wealth, the kingdom eventually fell from glory. Today, Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world. The people toil on farms, and many only manage to make a living by participating in an illegal drug trade with other countries.
In 2007, opium products made up 53 percent of Afghanistan’s GDP, making heroin, derived from the opium poppy, the country’s largest export. The United States and its allies in Afghanistan have been committed to stopping the production of this plant since the 2001 U.S. invasion. U.S. officials believe that opium income helps fund the Taliban, which has been regaining strength in recent years.
Opium poppies are bulbous flowers cultivated on huge farms in the countryside of Afghanistan and other parts of the world. Opium poppies flourish in dry, arid regions. Drought starting in the late 1990s also encouraged opium poppies to flourish in Afghanistan, because the poppies require less water than other crops. The brightly colored flowers take about three months to bloom. Once the leaves fall away, a bulbous seed pod is exposed. Inside is a milky white sap— pure opium. After the sap is collected, it is boiled with lime to extract the morphine, an intoxicating alkaloid that makes up about one-tenth of raw opium’s weight. This morphine is processed further using ammonia, then molded into bricks for transport to illicit laboratories where heroin is produced.
Most people have consumed an opium poppy in some form. Two common U.S. painkillers, morphine and codeine, are made from the plant. Even the poppy seeds used in poppy seed muffins come from opium poppies. Though the seeds are not intoxicating, they can produce false positives on drug test screenings. Opium is one of the oldest painkillers, and is still used in hospitals around the world despite the high potential for addiction. Legal opiates, however, do not come from Afghanistan but are grown primarily in India, the only country allowed to export it. Today, 92 percent of the world’s opium is grown in Afghanistan. The reason the country currently produces so much heroin is entwined in its history of conflict.
During the Cold War, Soviet troops invaded the country. Soviet-U.S. battles destroyed villages, killed civilians, and wiped out Afghani farmlands. When the Soviets withdrew, there was no longer a central government ruling Afghanistan. Many local warlords competed for power, making day-to-day life very dangerous for civilians.
In some cases, growing opium poppies was, and still is, the logical choice for farmers to make. In a country where bombs could drop at any moment, opium provides reliable income. Poppies are profitable and low-risk compared to other crops. While farmers often travel dangerous roads to deliver traditional crops to distant markets, opium dealers pick the drug up directly from growers. However, Martin Austermuhle of the Embassy of Afghanistan stresses that, “while growing opium might provide a farmer with money they need to survive, they still engage in an illegal trade that leaves them at risk of arrest and potentially provides funds to terrorist groups that kill innocent civilians.” Yet despite these risks, poppy cultivation burgeoned in Afghanistan.
According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, approximately 2.4 million people are involved in opium cultivation in Afghanistan—nearly one-tenth of the country’s population.
The United Nations’ initial policy was to destroy acres of opium farms in an effort toward eradication. This process began in October 2004 and continues to a limited extent today. In addition, the U.S. and the United Kingdom have taken active roles in ending Afghanistan’s heroin trade, but corruption has undermined their efforts. Border officials often allow smugglers to pass in exchange for cash, and regulators accept bribes from farmers. For this reason, only the smaller, poorer farmers are punished, while the larger growers are allowed to continue production. The Drug Enforcement Administration has been working to decrease corruption by vetting officials and making sure they pass rigorous standards.
In 2005, the International Council on Security and Development, a Paris-based think tank for international solution: convert Afghanistan’s illegal opium farms into legal ones that would produce opiates such as morphine and codeine. The proposal claimed that this would allow many countries—including Afghanistan—access to medicinal opiates. However, the plan was never put into action. The lack of opiates in many countries is not due to a simple lack of supply. Instead, fear of addiction, illegal trade, and distribution problems are responsible for the absence of pain relieving opiates in many countries.
These unsuccessful methods demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding of the opium cultivation problem in Afghanistan. However, the U.S. has partnered with the Afghan government to institute more effective measures, and progress is being made.
Though the U.S. has now largely given up on eradication, the change may come too late for some farmers as many crops have already been destroyed. Individual growers barely subsist on drug profits. Many have had to take out loans from traffickers or other growers in order to pay for basic needs. But when opium yields are not as high as growers expect, they are often left with no cash to repay the debt. The situation is especially dire when farmers’ crops are wiped out and they have no opium profits. This has led to a new phenomenon of “loan brides,” daughters of opium growers who are given away in marriage to repay a debt. Drought and counter-narcotic efforts have increased the occurrence of loan brides.
The country once produced enough food to both feed its people and export crops such as wheat, corn, and grapes. But now, much of the land that was used for food has been converted into opium fields. This has led to a food shortage, driving up the price of subsistence crops. With wheat prices rising and opium value declining, many farmers have switched back from opium to other crops. Opium production declined in 2008 for the first time since the U.S. invasion. Austermuhle points out, “If alternatives are available, many farmers will take them.”
However, the economics behind farmers switching to food crops makes long-term elimination of opium seem dubious. If high numbers of farmers switch to wheat, the supply will exceed demand and prices will drop. And unlike opium, wheat does not have a guaranteed international market because it can be grown virtually anywhere. But opium is illegal in almost every country, meaning, imports are highly valued.
The U.S. and its allies are now focusing on intercepting drugs in transit and preventing chemicals needed to produce heroin from being imported into the country. The DEA is currently working with the government of Afghanistan to create institutions needed to enforce the law. This shift away from other crops has seen more success than previous efforts to reduce opium production. Twenty-two of Afghanistan’s thirty-four provinces are now opium free, and this number is expected to rise in 2009. Austermuhle supports this new strategy, saying, “Once opium is planted, it is too late. If you eradicate existing opium fields, you run the risk of pushing the farmer further into the hands of the Taliban.”
Though the margin is narrowing, opium still sells for more than wheat—but government subsidies have allowed many farmers to make the switch without losing money. Austermuhle says, “The most effective measures [in stopping opium production] are those that give farmers workable alternatives to growing opium.” He acknowledges however, that these measures depend on cooperation with the international community. He stresses the importance of “establishing the infrastructure [such as] roads, airports, packing facilities, [and] cold storage so that farmers can add value to their crops, by turning them into juice, for example, or getting them to market more quickly and efficiently.” Without these measures, which currently depend on the support of other countries for funding, Afghanistan cannot replace opium as its top export.
Since the time of the Soviet conflict, Afghanistan has never regained the stability it once had. The economy became centered on production and trade of the drug. Years of fighting had destroyed the monetary system, and opium was often used like cash, traded for other goods, or saved for potential future hardships. Austermuhle says, “Decades of conflict left the Afghan government and economy shattered, providing ripe conditions for growth of a crop that is easy to harvest and transport, and provides massive profits for those involved with it.” The drug trade was valued at approximately four billion US dollars in 2007, a quarter of which was earned directly by opium farmers.
The increased heroin production in Afghanistan after the U.S. invasion caused many new problems. Record levels of production have caused the country to become saturated with heroin, which is available for low prices because of the high quantities being produced. According to volunteers in a video by Clancy Chassay, the country now has over a million addicts. The drug is sold openly in market places. While male addicts are often homeless, living in the streets, women tend to hide their addiction at home. There are few resources for those who fall victim to addiction. In Chassay’s video, many cited the hardship of war as their top reason for using drugs. Under Taliban rule, drug users faced harsh punishments, and many are still reluctant to seek help with their addictions.
These issues make removing heroin from the country seem beneficial to Afghanistan, but that may not be the case. Though heroin production is currently down around the country, it has become concentrated in the south, where the Taliban have a stronghold. The southern region is now producing 91 percent of the country’s heroin, allowing the Taliban to increase revenue by taxing growers and traffickers. The organization has been accused of encouraging poppy growth to finance its resistance to the U.S.-backed government. The Taliban presence has made it difficult to initiate poppy alternative incentives in provinces like Helmand, which is now the foremost producer of opium in the country. As a result, the Taliban is receiving a higher percentage of opium profits because cultivation is concentrated in the South where Taliban forces are strongest.
But removing opium may not mean that Afghanistan becomes a drug free country. In an interview with Ron Synovitz of Radio Free Europe, UNODC spokesman Walter Kemp said, “Afghanistan is now one of the biggest, if not the biggest, producer of cannabis in the world. This is often in provinces that have become opium-free.” According to Ryan Ball (now-formerly) of the DEA, “Afghanistan likely will continue to produce large quantities of hashish for export worldwide, as it has done for decades in the past. Marijuana production in the region has been increasing in recent years; however, there is not sufficient evidence at this time to suggest that this increase is due to any reduction in opium growth.” Whether increased hashish production is related to reducing opium or not, it is clear that drugs in the region are a presence that will not disappear anytime soon.
The question that the U.S. government doesn’t seem to have considered is whether opium production should be stopped at all, or if the U.S. should be involved in preventing this production. Billions of tax dollars have already been spent on eradication efforts. The U.S. attempts to provide alternatives to opium have seen moderate success, but are dependent on continued funding from Congress. While encouraging food growth in Afghanistan will help feed the nation’s people, it seems possible that a balance could be struck between opium growth and food growth.
The government could legalize opium growth and collect a moderate tax from farmers. This tax income could provide money to subsidize food crops from within Afghanistan, instead of the U.S. paying for these subsidies. Legalizing opium growth would mean that the new government would see opium profits instead of the Taliban—which, according to Austermuhle, “are so dependent on the sale of opium to support themselves that in 2008, they actually stockpiled opium to avoid flooding the market and letting prices for the crop drop.” This would in turn benefit the U.S., whose primary concern is preventing a Taliban resurgence. The government would also be able to regulate opium growth so that there wouldn’t be excess in Afghanistan, potentially curbing addiction.
While Western nations may see heroin production as detrimental, allowing its production could be a beneficial strategy for Afghanistan. The nations concerned about drug use could focus on preventing addiction from within their borders instead of attempting to stop drug production in Afghanistan at the expense of Afghan farmers.
There is no simple solution to the problem of opium production in Afghanistan. While the drug is devastating to addicts and their families, growing poppies provides income for farmers. It seems that stymieing production will be difficult as long as there is still demand for heroin. Austermuhle asserts, “Much like the production of cocaine in Colombia, the growth of opium will always find a place to happen if the strategy against it is not … comprehensive in scope. Getting rid of opium in one place doesn’t stop it from moving elsewhere.”
Replacing opium crops with food crops could potentially lead to a crash in the economy. Making experimental changes could have deadly consequences for the citizens of one the poorest countries on earth. But with Western troops influencing the agricultural economy, the people of Afghanistan have no choice but to wait and see whether their country can survive without opium production.
The people inhabiting the land of the once great kingdom now struggle to survive. Many seek to take away their only means of living, claiming the opium poppies are a poison. But these poppies sustain those who cultivate and sell them. Though there is hope of significantly reducing drug trade throughout the country, there are no guarantees. For Afghan citizens, this is a bittersweet prospect.