Asia Times: Water loans wean farmers off opium


	June 10, 2000	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

Water loans wean farmers off opium
By Nadeem Yaqub

JALALABAD, Afghanistan - More than a dozen bearded men sit on a string cot sipping tarakhe, the traditional black tea with sweets in a village home in Shinwar district some 45 kilometers southeast of Jalalabad.

They are discussing ways of repaying loans given to them by a UN narcotics regulation agency to encourage them to shift away from opium to farming other crops.

Jalalabad is the capital of Afghanistan's eastern province of Nangarh ar which is one of the major poppy opium-producing regions of Afghanistan. The province reportedly provides nearly a fourth of Afghanistan's total poppy output.

According to the US State Department's latest annual report on the international drugs trade, Afghanistan produced some 1,670 tonnes of opium in 1999 - almost a fourth more than the preceding year. This is why the UN International Drug Control Program (UNDCP) has chosen Shinwar among the four areas in the country to launch projects to show that abandoning opium farming will not hurt the locals.

According to the UNDCP's Annual Opium Poppy Survey, an estimated 90,983 hectares of poppy were cultivated in 1999 in 104 districts across 18 provinces of Afghanistan. This year's figures are not yet available as harvesting in some provinces is not yet over. ''I know opium production is a bad thing but other cash crops do not have good return. My family can only survive if we grow poppy,'' says Catheli resident Anwarullah.

His father Sayed Gul Bacha, who is said to be nearly 100 years old, says that he inherited the tradition of poppy cultivation from his father and has passed it on to his son Anwarullah. Their family owns three cows and a small patch of land. According to Anwarullah, poppy fetches 15 times more money than wheat produced on the same area. The temptation for poppy farming is even stronger for farmers with small landholdings, as most tillers in this area have.

However, farmers in this region are now beginning to discover that they can earn a decent income by things other than opium cultivation. Unlike him, Anwarullah's five sons may no longer to follow the family tradition. The UNDCP is trying to wean the farmers away from poppy farming by not only offering loans to cultivate wheat, but running schemes to raise rural lifestyles in the region. Since 1997, UNDCP has been offering loans on easy terms to farmers like Anwarullah to encourage them to grow food instead of narcotics. According to senior UNDCP official in Jalalabad Mohammad Naseeb, the loan money recovered from the farmers will be used to buy a power generator for the village.

According to Mohammad Hassan Hameed, rural development officer UNDCP, the Shinwar Drug Control Action Plan has two goals. One is to end opium poppy cultivation by increasing income from non-poppy sources. The other is to raise living standards of the people by improving basic facilities. The $1.8 million program aims to raise non-poppy crop yields by restoring traditional irrigation systems, set up opportunities for livestock farming production, provide drinking water and basic schooling for children. ''We have rehabilitated the Karez system (the traditional irrigation system of underground wells and channels) and Nangarhar irrigation canal and the result is more irrigation water for the farmers,'' says Hameed.

The UNDCP program aims to achieve its goals with the help of the beneficiaries themselves. For this, 22 people's committees known as karez have been set up.

According to UNDCP Jalalabad official Naseeb, the efforts are bearing fruit. The water flow in the irrigation channels has swelled by nearly 500 liters per second to 1,454 liters per second. The area under irrigation too has gone up by more than a fifth to over 1,200 hectares. This is why the program has managed to lower poppy output in the area for the first time in several years. ''This year there is a 20 percent reduction in poppy cultivation than the previous year due to the commitment of the farmers of Shinwar district,'' Naseeb says. However, an acute water shortage crisis gripping large parts of Afghanistan has had an impact. According to those in poppy production , opium yield this year will be considerably less due to the drought. Although poppy needs less water than other crops, it needs some rains for better yields, say farmers.

But abandoning the centuries-old tradition will not be so easy as poppy farmer Said Afsar explains: ''I am ready to leave opium production only if there is an alternative source of livelihood so that my family and I can survive,'' he says.

Efforts to eliminate poppy farming in Afghanistan also have to contend with the clout of the international drug trade, which is said to thrive on the abundant and cheaply available opium from this nation for making heroin. There have been several cases of farmers having switched to opium farming to repay small loans taken during hard times.

According to the UNDCP survey, the internal conflicts in Afghanistan and the resultant breakdown in formal and informal governance too have weakened social and legal curbs on poppy cultivation. ''While many farmers considered opium production haram (forbidden) in Islam, this did not prevent them from growing the crop,'' the report notes.

(Inter Press Service)

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