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EDITORIAL: Afghanistan’s poppy crop and US dilemma

President Hamid Karzai has entered the New Year with a new mandate. He does not carry the suffix ‘interim’ any more. He also has a new cabinet. Since he emerged on the scene, following the defeat of the Taliban militia, he has come a long way. Having secured 55 percent of the vote, he has a sizeable mandate. He enjoys international support in his efforts to plug Afghanistan into the international mainstream. He may not have been able to get all the money he thinks is needed for Afghanistan’s reconstruction, but he has reasonable financial resources at hand and in the pipeline. He has been quite successful in sidelining the powerful Northern Alliance, dropping Mohammad Fahim from his election ticket and removing the threat from Herat’s powerful governor, Ismail Khan. He has, in his cabinet, some really smart technocrats. So things should be looking up for him in 2005.

But there’s a catch. It relates to the bumper poppy harvest as well as the carryover stocks from the previous year. Opium not only threatens to make Afghanistan the top supplier of drugs to Europe and North America but in a domestic spin-off could also neutralise much good that Mr Karzai plans to do for his country. It would result in a huge informal economy that would not let Afghanistan’s formal economy to take off by impacting Kabul’s revenues; it would increase smuggling, enhance the power of local chieftains and, in many cases, the warlords, sustain gun-running, reduce security overall and, if nothing is done, sabotage the entire effort to install a central edifice.

It is no wonder that the Bush administration is worried about this development, though it must be said that some of what now stares Kabul and Washington in the face could have been avoided if the United States had heeded the ample warnings from independent observers and dropped the policy of co-opting the local warlords to fight Taliban-Al Qaeda elements while ignoring the various activities of these warlords, big and small. As things stand, however, according to some estimates, the next spring’s crop could earn the warlords $7 billion or more, a whopping increase over the record $2.2 billion in 2004. Its impact on the economy can be gauged from the fact that last year’s earnings from poppy amounted to 60 percent of Afghanistan’s GDP.

Some US policymakers want to take the bull by the horns and advocate aerial spraying to destroy the crop. They are concerned that money from this crop will also reach the coffers of Taliban who pose the biggest threat to Mr Karzai’s efforts to bring normalcy to the country. Mr Karzai is opposed to this policy and feels it could alienate the rural voter in the parliamentary elections scheduled for April. Many in US official circles agree with Mr Karzai’s assessment and want to leave the crop alone for now while cracking down hard on the traffickers. For its part, the US State Department has asked Congress to earmark $780 million for a counter-narcotics effort in Afghanistan. Out of this potential fund, $152 million are meant for aerial eradication of the crop.

The debate underscores a dilemma for the United States. Its three main policy objectives in Afghanistan were — and are — counter-terrorism, counter-narcotics and political stability. But it does look like they might be conflicting with each other, some would even say contradictory. Reports suggest that while the debate is raging, America has still to come up with a clear policy on the issue.

Leaving aside other multiple factors, the most important is poppy’s nexus with Afghanistan’s socio-economy. The poppy is a robust cash crop that does not require too much water, finds the Afghan land and harsh climate suitable for its growth, and can be stored for long periods. In the absence of alternative cash crops and other economic means, it is the natural mainstay of Afghans’ livelihood. Mr Karzai’s fear that destroying the crop before the April elections would alienate the voter especially because it would mean the destruction of the voters’ main source of earnings is correct. The problem is that the West looks at the supply side of it without taking too much trouble to reduce demand in the West. Further, the US concern begins and ends with eradication of poppy. This is a non-starter. Any policy that seeks to wean the Afghans away from poppy needs to first begin with spelling out the alternatives. A nomadic, partially agrarian economy at the local level and a rentier state at the macro level, Afghanistan cannot be expected to close the chapter on poppy just because the West has too many actual and potential junkies that would be supplied by Afghanistan.

Any policy needs to be multi-pronged. It must begin by seeking alternative sources of income for the Afghans on the one hand and estimating, on the other hand, if some of the production can be legalised and channelled into the country’s economy. Simultaneously, there may be need to prod Afghanistan to move towards industrialisation to reduce peoples’ dependence on a single-crop agrarian economy. In the short-term, the US and its allies could tighten up efforts to curb smuggling on the one hand and earmark funds for Kabul on the other hand to buy the existing stocks from the people. This would be a much better policy, not least because it would enhance the influence of Kabul in the countryside. Its various modalities could be worked out with the aim of incrementally increasing incentives for those who will not grow poppy and punishing those who would. The essential point is to look at the problematic in a holistic fashion instead of focusing on the narrow and the short-term. *

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