>From the Sidney Morning Herald Onions out, poppies in and let the good times roll Sticky business ... a poppy is slit to release the ooze that will become opium. Farmers are wasting little time returning to what they do best, Craig Nelson writes from Ghochak.
While there is widespread doubt that anything resembling law and order will bloom in Afghanistan in the next six months, there is no doubt that opium poppies will - in abundance. "Everyone is planting," says Ashoqullah, a 25-year-old landowner. "In a few months, these fields will be covered in a blanket of spectacular red and white flowers. We'll draw the ooze from the flower bulbs, pack it in plastic bags or small soap cartons and sell it at the bazaar." In this village, 10 kilometres west of the eastern city of Jalalabad, Ashoqullah licks his lips in anticipation of his future bounty as farmers in the fields behind him slash at white heads of cauliflower and yank fragrant spring onions from the soil. They are rushing to harvest their food crops so they can sow poppy seeds in their place. The war against the Taliban has, for the moment at least, defeated the war on drugs in Afghanistan. Although the Taliban have been vanquished, so has their ban on cultivating opium poppies. The prohibition, which carried the threat of a three-month jail sentence, led to a 96 per cent fall in Afghanistan's production of raw opium - from more than 453,500 kilograms in 1999 to18,500 kilograms this year, according to the United Nations Drug Control Program. With the demise of the puritanical Taliban, one of the world's poorest countries is expected to regain its standing as the world's leading producer of opium and chief supplier of heroin for Europe. At the next level of the trade is Mirakbar, who also can barely suppress his glee at his anticipated windfall. The walled, mud-brick fortress in nearby Ghani Khel - known across the region as the opium bazaar - is abuzz with activity as he and about 300 opium merchants ply their trade. Operating in narrow smoky aisles from wooden-door stalls equipped with little more than scales and tidy piles of plastic bags, Mirakbar and the other dealers are buying the opium paste from farmers for roughly $US90 ($176) per 500 grams. In turn, he says, they are selling it to brokers for $US100. The raw opium is then shuttled by truck, mule or taxi into Pakistan, where it is processed into heroin worth billions of dollars to users around the world. "There is no other business in Afghanistan but the poppy," laughs Mirakbar, 25, as other buyers swirl around him. "The Taliban may have tried to prevent farmers from growing it, but they stockpiled it in warehouses and were involved in trading it. The new Government will be, too." For Ashoqullah, the landowner, the logic supporting poppy growing is simple and unassailable. He says most farmers have large families of up to 15 members and cannot support themselves by raising vegetables alone. With two bags of fertiliser costing $US15 each, a farmer growing poppies can earn 120 times more than he can cultivating food crops on the same tract of land, he says. The issue of poppy growing is strictly economic for nearly all Afghans, who are abstemious to a fault. They abhor the use of opium and other recreational drugs, though they have in their midst some of the most sought-after opium and hashish in the world. They rarely even smoke cigarettes. For Ashoqullah and officials in the new local government here, the solution to poppy cultivation is simple: find something else for farmers to do. "There are widows, there are orphans and there are many poor here. They all need something. Pay them not to grow poppies, pay them to grow something else or construct factories, schools, irrigation systems and roads," says Haji Abdul Jabar, the district officer in Ghani Khel. "That's the only way out of poppies."
