Pubdate: Fri, 05 Apr 2002
Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)
Copyright: 2002 Hearst Communications Inc.
Contact:  http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/388
Author: Dexter Filkins, New York Times
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?203 (Terrorism)

AFGHANISTAN PLANS TO PAY FARMERS TO DESTROY POPPIES

Farmers Will Get $500 Per Acre, With Western Nations Bearing Cost

KABUL, Afghanistan -- With this country's vast fields of poppies ready to 
flower soon, Afghan officials said yesterday that they will embark on a 
novel plan to pay farmers to destroy their crops, whether they want to or not.

Ashraf Ghani, a senior adviser to Hamid Karzai, the chairman of the interim 
government, said agents of the government will fan out across three 
provinces thought to produce about 90 percent of the country's opium.

The undisclosed cost will be borne by the United States, Britain and other 
Western countries, which have been pressuring the Afghan government to 
crack down on poppy production. In recent months, there have been some 
suggestions that Western nations would condition the aid they have pledged 
to Afghanistan on efforts by Karzai to attack poppy cultivation. Ghani said 
this was not the case.

Under the plan, the Afghan officials will offer poppy farmers about $500 
per acre to destroy their plants. If the farmers refuse, Ghani said, the 
officials will destroy the crops anyway.

The initiative represents a last-ditch effort to forestall a big comeback 
for poppy production in Afghanistan, which had become the world's largest 
supplier of opium until the then-ruling Taliban cracked down on production, 
which led to a sharply reduced harvest last year.

After the collapse of the Taliban in the fall, many of the farmers who had 
successfully cultivated poppies rushed to plant again, and this year's crop 
is now expected to be as large as some of those in the mid-1990s, when 
poppy production flourished under the encouragement of the Taliban, 
apparently to help them raise money.

The new initiative is designed to blunt the economic effect of eradicating 
the flowering plants, which, as harvesttime nears, can be seen during 
almost any drive through the provinces where the program will apply. One 
proposal is to provide jobs for farm laborers who ordinarily would harvest 
the crops.

Racing to beat the poppy harvest, which will begin within weeks, government 
officials will begin handing out cash payments Sunday in Badakshan province 
in eastern Afghanistan, Helmand province in the south and Nangarhar in the 
northeast, the three centers of poppy production in the country. The 
payments, which will be made on the spot, are designed to give the farmer 
slightly more than he would have made had he grown wheat, not opium poppies.

The initiative announced yesterday raises the possibility of a 
confrontation between the fledgling government and the poppy farmers, who 
are known for their sometimes violent resistance to attempts to prevent 
them from growing their prized crops.

Still, Ghani said that if the farmers refuse to destroy their crops, his 
government is prepared to do the job for them.

"State power is based on the legitimate use of force," Ghani said. "We hope 
it doesn't reach that point."

In impoverished, drought-stricken Afghanistan, poppy growing has proved to 
be one of the few reliable sources of a decent income. Poppies also use far 
less water than wheat or corn.

For all these reasons, Western officials have largely abandoned hope of 
substantially eradicating Afghanistan's poppy crop this year. Even so, 
Ghani and Younis Qanooni, the interior minister, said the Karzai government 
is determined to eliminate poppy farming as a viable occupation in Afghanistan.

In a decree Karzai signed earlier this week, he prohibited the repayment of 
loans in opium, a widespread practice among poppy farmers that effectively 
imposes interest rates of as much as 500 percent per annum on the farmer. 
Karzai also ordered the closing of opium shops, common sights in many 
Afghan towns.

In his decree, Karzai emphasized that the cash payments to poppy farmers 
will be a one-time thing. "The ban on cultivation of poppies will be 
strictly enforced from now on," Karzai said.
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