Opium Production in Afghanistan Increases for Third Year
By ROD NORDLAND
United Nations report raises concerns for economy after coalition forces leave in 2014.
Noorullah Shirzada/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
An Afghan farmer in his poppy field earlier this month in the Khogyani district of eastern Nangarhar province.
By ROD NORDLAND
Published: April 15, 2013
KABUL, Afghanistan – For the third year in a row, opium cultivation has
increased across Afghanistan, reversing earlier gains from a decade-long
international and Afghan government effort to combat the drug trade,
according to a United Nations report released on Monday.
The report’s findings raised concerns among international law
enforcement officials that if the trend continues, opium would be the
country’s major economic activity after the departure of foreign
military forces in 2014, raising the specter of what one referred to as
“the world’s first true narco-state.”
Afghanistan is already the world’s largest producer of opium, and last
year had accounted for 75 percent of the world’s heroin supply. “The
assumption is it will reach again to 90 percent this year,” said
Jean-Luc Lemahieu, the United Nations’ top counternarcotics official
here.
The report, by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime,
the Afghanistan Opium Risk Assessment 2013, based on extensive
surveying around the country, found that opium cultivation has increased
in 12 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces. In only one province, Herat in the
west, is cultivation expected to decrease, the report said.
The report suggests that Taliban insurgents took advantage of insecurity
in several provinces to assist opium farmers and win over popular
support — plus protecting an important form of income for their
operations. Opium cultivation has increased most wherever there has been
insecurity.
Overall, the number of acres of farmland devoted to opium poppy
cultivation this year is expected to top the figure in 2008, when poppy
plantings reached a peak of 388,000 acres nationwide, Mr. Lemahieu said.
After 2008, eradication efforts, as well as a cash incentive program
for provinces that eradicatedopium poppy crops, helped to reduce that
dramatically through 2010.
This year three provinces — Balkh, Faryab and Takhar in the north and
west — are in danger of losing their poppy-free status, according to the
UNODC report. They are among 16 provinces previously declared
poppy-free; such provinces receive $1 million awards from the American
Embassy, paid directly to the governor’s office.
In February, the State Department announced
that it was handing out $18.2 million in Good Performers Initiative
Awards for reducing poppy cultivation in Afghanistan. There was no
immediate response from American Embassy officials on how this program
would be affected by the new United Nations data.
Opium production has become particularly high in Helmand Province
in the south, the country’s major opium-producing area, and in Kandahar
Province. Both are places where the surge of American troops helped to
beat back Taliban influence, but as those troops returned home last
year, the cultivation increased dramatically. More than 70 percent of
opium production now takes place in three former surge provinces.
“This country is on its way to becoming the world’s first true
narco-state,” said one international law enforcement official, who did
not want to be quoted criticizing the Afghan government. “The opium
trade is a much bigger part of the economy already than narcotics ever
were in Bolivia or Colombia.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” said Mirwais Yasini, former head of
counternarcotics for the Afghan government and now a prominent member of
parliament, regarding the narco-state concern. “But if it goes on like
this in the future I am worried about that happening.”
Mr. Yasini said that eradication efforts had been countered by
insecurity, compounded by corruption at local, provincial and national
levels. “I don’t see anything tangible that has been done, there is no
meaningful crop substitution and no effective enforcement,” he said.
The United Nations has estimated in the past that opium trafficking
constitutes 15 percent of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product, a figure
that is expected to rise as international military and development
spending declines with the NATO withdrawal at the end of 2014.
The mining sector, the other big hope of economic self-sufficiency for
Afghanistan, is still moribund, as the Afghan parliament continues to
bicker over a mining law, and lack of security and legal clarity has so
far prevented large-scale exploitation of mineral resources.
The increase in opium poppy cultivation is attributed mainly to
historically high prices for opium, coupled with insecurity. Prices
began rising dramatically in 2010 when a poppy blight severely reduced
crop yields, but they have remained high since. Farmers earn as much as
$203 a kilogram for harvested opium, compared to only 43 cents a kilo
for wheat or $1.25 for rice, according to the report.
Mr. Lemahieu praised efforts of the Afghan Ministry of Counternarcotics,
but said international donors had greatly underfunded key programs to
combat trafficking, with only $300,000 of a requested $11 million
pledged this year.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:Correction: April 15, 2013
An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to the proportion of Afghanistan’s opium production that comes from three provinces where the “surge” of extra American troops were deployed to beat back the Taliban. It is more than 70 percent, not more than one-third.
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