In Zhari, a parched district northwest of Afghanistan's second city of Kandahar, 13 year-old Naqibullah is working in his father's poppy field, preparing for the main harvest of the year.
ZHARI, Afghanistan: In Zhari, a parched district northwest
of Afghanistan's second city of Kandahar, 13 year-old Naqibullah is
working in his father's poppy field, preparing for the main harvest of
the year.
Harvesting the poppy and collecting the resin that will be
used to make opium, heroin and other drugs that eventually find their
way on to world markets is a labour-intensive business and boys as young
as six are hard at work in the fields.
"There is no school or madrassa (religious school) so I have
to help my father in the poppy field and work with him," Naqibullah
said.
Afghanistan is the source of much of the world's illegal
opium and the crop forms a vital part of the economy of the southern
part of the country, despite years of efforts to eradicate cultivation
and replace it with other crops.
"I have 20 members in my family, I have to feed them," said
Naqibullah's father, 60 year-old farmer Haji Janan. "We are poor people,
we have lots of problems in our village, there is no hospital or
electricity."
Dry conditions that led to crop failures in the arid,
semi-desert regions where much of Afghanistan's opium crop is harvested
helped cut cultivation and production sharply last year but eradication
campaigns have had only a mixed impact.
Taliban insurgents are known to benefit from the crop in some areas by taxing farmers and opium traders.
Police and government officials are also believed to be
deeply implicated at all levels of the trade and Haji Janan even said a
delegation of elders from the area had obtained consent from
high-ranking officials to complete the harvest.
"They have given us permission to harvest our fields this year because of our hardship," he said.
Establishing the truth of such assertions is difficult and
the claim is rejected by Ali Shamsi, deputy governor of Kandahar
province, who says that eradication operations have been held up by
problems with the central government.
POPPIES OR POMEGRANATES
In Zhari district, almost 5,000 hectares (12,000 acres) were
devoted to opium cultivation last year, almost a quarter of the total
in Kandahar province. Just 180 hectares (450 acres) were eradicated,
according to the 2015 Afghanistan Opium Survey by the United Nations
Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
"We are continuously in contact with the Ministry of
Counter Narcotics asking them to provide us capability, funds and assets
to start the anti-narcotic campaigning in Kandahar province as quickly
as possible," Shamsi said, blaming problems at the ministry for the
failure to start eradication.
A spokesman for the ministry in Kabul rejected the comment."We have our organised plan for eradication in Kandahar province," said Hanif Danishyar, a spokesman for the ministry. "Yes, there has been cultivation in Zhari district but we will eradicate the fields," he said.
Cultivation in Kandahar province declined by almost 40 percent last year, according to U.N. estimates, part of a nationwide drop of almost a fifth in the amount of land growing opium.
But the fall was more down to crop failures than any eradication campaign, the UNODC said.
Kandahar is well know for its vegetable and fruit cultivation
including pomegranates, grapes and plums and Afghanistan's Western
backers have long tried to coax farmers into replacing opium with legal
crops.Zhari is one of seven Kandahar districts targeted for assistance in the three-year Kandahar Food Zone Program backed by USAID, which aims to create alternative livelihoods for opium farmers and funding agricultural infrastructure including greenhouses and irrigation canals.
Shamsi says the US$28 million programme, including agriculture, irrigation and other assistance backed by international donors was having an effect.
"We have already implemented alternative projects in those districts where poppy was cultivated before," he said.
But outside in the fields, many farmers remain to be convinced.
"We have to cultivate poppy," Haji Janan said.
(Additional reporting by Hamid Shalizi in Kabul; Writing by James Mackenzie; Editing by Robert Birsel)
- Reuters
Families in the fields as annual Afghan poppy harvest begins
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