Afghanistan: Controversial battle against opium cultivation – US plans endanger reconstruction

At the beginning of the Afghanstan conference in London the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) charged the US government on Tuesday with endangering the reconstruction of Afghanistan with its plans for the use of aircraft to spray pesticide against opium fields. „The control of opium cultivation with such radical methods will cause more damage than help”, warned the GfbV expert, Ulrich Delius. Similar attempts to control the cultivation of opium in Columbia have shown this. A forcible operation of this kind is also irresponsible because it is also a general danger for the safety of the foreign soldiers and aid workers.

The massive use of pesticides would have catastrophic ecological consequences and affect the production of foodstuffs. The social system in the villages would be destroyed because many farmers would have to give up their contaminated fields and leave. Others would – as in Columbia – remain in spite of the contamination and plant opium again because they have no other way of securing their livelihood.

„This programme of destruction will only increase the reservations of the rural population against the UN peacekeeping troops, but also against the Karsai government, which is seen by many Afghans as a „compliant instrument” of the international community and not as an organ for voicing Afghan interests”, warned Delius.

While the office for combating narcotics, which is part of the US Foreign Office, is already looking for personal to man the spraying aircraft, the British government rejects such radical methods. Great Britain, which has been given by the international community the task of controlling the cultivation of drugs in Afghanistan announced only yesterday that it would be sending a further 4,700 soldiers to one of the most important drug provinces in Afghanistan.

Opium cultivation and trade make up already 40 percent of the GNP of Afghanstan. According to the British Defence Ministry in January 2006 the entanglement in the drug trade goes right up high in government circles. It is pure hypocrisy if the Afghan Minister for Drug Control, Habibullah Qadiri, holds only the resurgence of the Taliban responsible for the opium boom. The British authorities see a substantial involvement in the flourishing drug trade on the part of the governors Mohammed Omar Abdul Latif Ibrahimi (Province of Kundus) and Mohammed Daud (Province of Badakshan and Feisabad).