Taliban and Afghanistan's opium/poppy growing industry

See also Poppy farming days numbered in Southern Helmand

In Poppy War, Taliban Aim to Protect a Cash Crop
By Taimoor Shah and Alissa J. Rubin
Published: April 11, 2012
The New York Times

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — So focused are the Taliban on securing this year’s opium poppy crop — and the support of the farmers tending it — that in the early days of their spring offensive in the south, they are targeting not only the officials trying to eradicate the plants, but also the tractors they use.
This year, the poppy fields that are so beautiful right now, carpeted with lithe red blossoms, are also sown with land mines — the product of the increased cooperation between poppy farmers and the militants they see as protectors of their economic interests, government officials say.

“This year there is more poppy cultivation in Helmand, especially in places where people have confiscated the government lands and in places that were desert,” said Daoud Ahmadi, the spokesman for the governor in Helmand Province. “The reason is that the Taliban promised and persuaded farmers to grow poppy and told them they would protect them.”

One suicide attack this week in Helmand Province, the poppy-growing capital not just of Afghanistan but of the world, was indicative of the far larger fight being taken up to control the crop across the southern opium belt, say government officials and the people who live there.

The multifaceted attack included a team of three suicide bombers, wearing police uniforms, who entered the Musa Qala district police headquarters intent on killing the police chief, who has been aggressive in his poppy-eradication efforts. Four officers died, and the chief was injured.

In the bazaar outside, other Taliban fighters strategically positioned two motorcycles loaded with explosives as close as possible to the tractors used in the anti-poppy campaign, said Niamatullah Khan, the Musa Qala district governor. A third explosives-laden motorcycle detonated elsewhere in the bazaar, killing three more police officers.

In Helmand, the government has embraced eradication as part of a comprehensive program to discourage farmers from growing poppies and to subsidize alternative crops. The program has been most successful in the Helmand River valley, and the Musa Qala district is far from the heart of the effort.

The program has been met with hostility by many local residents who say they are reduced to poverty without the income from the poppy crop. A study by the sociologist David Mansfeld, a researcher for Tufts University, noted that families who grow poppies eat meat more frequently and are more likely to be able to afford to marry off their children — weddings often come with crippling costs in Afghanistan, where relatives far and near must be hosted and fed.

“No one wants to see his poppy field destroyed. A farmer is even ready to fight for his poppy field,” said a merchant in Musa Qala who asked not to be named because the subject was so delicate. “If a son of a farmer is in the government and wants to destroy his father’s poppy field, the father would be happy if his son is killed by Taliban.”

Complicating matters is the hold that poppy profits have on government officials. Local farmers say that eradication is selective, meaning that officials often exempt the fields of relatives or of people who bribe them sufficiently.

In Musa Qala, the police chief — who is known locally only as Koka — has a reputation as a ruthless fighter against the Taliban. He has made it a cause to destroy their poppy fields, but not necessarily those of others, like the policemen who work for him, said several local residents.

While only a small part of the total income from poppies goes to the Taliban — roughly 10 percent, according to estimates by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime — but that adds up to a lot in a $4 billion-plus harvest.

“The police chief made a plan to eradicate the poppy fields of Taliban commanders first and then kill the poppy fields of those who are sympathetic with the Taliban, like landlords who help Taliban or those farmers whose sons or relatives are with Taliban,” the merchant said. “This decision really infuriated Taliban commanders, and by any means the Taliban wanted to kill Koka, so that’s why yesterday they made a big effort. You cannot imagine how lucky he was to survive.”

Mr. Khan, the district governor, described a chaotic scene: after the suicide bombers made their way into the police headquarters — their initial attacks muffled by silencers on their pistols — the chief burst out of his office. But then he hesitated, evidently confused by the attackers’ police uniforms.

One of the chief’s officers shouted, “They are not the real police,” Mr. Khan said. The chief pulled out his pistol and shot one of the attackers; as he did, the man’s suicide vest exploded, wounding the other two bombers and the chief himself. The chief was taken to a NATO hospital, local government officials said.

Mr. Ahmadi, the spokesman in the Helmand Province governor’s office, said the police chief did not give preferential treatment to some farmers while going after the Taliban, but he admitted that the government had found such a pattern in Marja, in central Helmand, with members of the police and the local council being allowed to grow poppies. That has since changed, he said.

He said that the militant leadership known as the Quetta Shura, in need of cash, had instructed the Taliban to plant poppies.

“The only means of income they are relying on now is the poppy in Afghanistan, especially in Helmand Province, so that’s why they are planting mines in poppy fields, staging direct attacks, ambushing the eradication campaign and sometimes engaging in prolonged firefights,” Mr. Ahmadi said.

The intense resistance to eradication means that there will be a substantial poppy harvest in Helmand and that the campaign may create dangerous resentment, Mr. Ahmadi said.

“I do not think it will be possible for the eradication campaign to destroy all the poppy fields in Helmand,” he said. “And any person whose fields are destroyed, he is becoming Taliban.”