The New Nation - Internet Edition

Sudhurendar Sharma

If you are one who is worried about illicit drugs afflicting your college-going children you have a profound reason to be so, as farmers in Afghanistan have began sowing seeds of what is expected to become the biggest and most lucrative opium poppy crop yet. For the poor farmers in this war-ravaged country, poppy harvests secure their livelihoods. It is however another matter that field upon field of beautiful bloom also fuels $ 400 billion worth of global trade in illicit drugs and several billion worth in arms trade.

Should Afghan farmers be held responsible for misuse of opium that has medicinal properties? Can they be dissuaded from growing poppy? They might oblige provided alternate crops are as lucrative! Researchers have burnt their fingers with alternate crops like saffron and mint, none fetching as much as US$ 122 to a kilo for poppy. For negligible input costs and a longer shelf life, poppy remains the best bet. No surprise that opium's export worth at US$ 3 billion contributes 40 per cent to Afghanistan's GDP.

Undoubtedly, there are good reasons for farmers to grow opium poppy and for the rest of the world to be uneasy at the same time. Does this not leave the world exposed to the menace of drugs? So it seems, as the political economy of a country weakened by ongoing war finds itself vulnerable to the divisive forces that exercise control over peoples' lives and livelihoods. With its growing influence, the Taliban have encouraged poppy cultivation to obtain a large part of their funding through trade in illicit narcotics.

And, they have indeed been successful as neither the $ 100 billion a year war been successful nor the piecemeal efforts to wean farmers from growing poppy. The crucial question remains: If Afghanistan were to somehow able to reduce opium production, who would benefit? The Taliban and black market entrepreneurs, whose stockpiles of opium would skyrocket in value. Thousands of Afghan peasants will plant illegal harvest, utilising guerrilla farming methods to escape eradication efforts.

It is good time for the Afghan farmers though, as the world debates its strategy to control opium growth. The crop of 2007 was up by more than one-third from 2006. It is quite likely that the current annual harvest of 8,200 tonnes, over 93 per cent of the world's harvest, will be bettered the coming year. Afghan farmers make profit but the problem is that they are producing 3,000 tonnes in excess of the global demand, fueling illicit opium trade worth US$ 20 billion.

Poppy is a medicinal crop that the world cannot live without. Else, it would have long sprayed the crop to extinction. Heroin and morphine, two of the common drugs, can be derived from the gum in opium poppy seed heads. Morphine is in great demand as a painkiller: in North America, average annual morphine consumption is 55 milligrams per person, in north Africa and the Middle East this plummets to 0.29 milligrams per person, and in the Asia Pacific region it is 0.67 milligrams per person.

There are no evidences to suggest that morphine is in short supply as licit opium produced in India, Turkey, France, Spain and Australia meets majority of the global demand. Yet, trade in illicit opium flourishes at the behest of narcotics trade that is worth 6 per cent of the total worldwide trade in all goods. Not only is opium economy politically deeply entrenched but its stakeholders are as diverse and powerful, manipulating the demand-supply equilibrium in its favour.

Internationally, the consensus is that the situation in Afghanistan is at crisis point, but there remains intense disagreement on the best course of action. First, it isn't clear who the real enemy is: opium harvest or the terror network? While the United Nations Office in Drugs & Crime (UNODC) considers eradicating poppy as a means to control illicit drug trade, the United States sees poppy eradication as an opportunity to decimate the Taliban.

There are strong indications that if harvest was up next season on 2007's, the US would absolutely spray this coming year. If history has any lessons, the US will clearly be knocking at the wrong door.

The carrot & stick of crop eradication has been tried and failed, because usually production gets shifted: opium production moved from Pakistan to Afghanistan; coca from Peru to Colombia; and cannabis from Mexico to the US. While impoverished farmers did suffer, the global supply remained unaffected.

Is there a way out? The European Parliament's Committee on Foreign Affairs has issued a report recently calling the Afghan government to turn part of the poppy crop into legal analgesics, such as morphine and codeine.The Senlis Council, an international think tank with an office in Kabul, has sought control of opium production by local communities, with license to produce morphine powder from their crop.

Expectedly, the US state department is not convinced if `legalization is an option.' One would only expect the British to agree, who wonder if the Afghanistan government is equipped to enforce legal provisions at the cost of confronting the narcotics traders. For the US and its allied forces, any excuse that justifies war is a trade off worthy of consideration. Opium is just the right excuse for the US to keep pounding the Afghan territory.

Can the world be immune to current developments in Afghanistan when its borders are porous to the outflow of illicit trade in drugs, arms and crime? India has invested in rebuilding efforts in the war-ravaged country but has made pretty little contribution to help develop a clear perspective on poppy, drugs and terror. It has rich experience in poppy licensing that can be transferred to Afghanistan. Afterall, India has faced the worst of terrorist violence in the past decade.