In summer, when the weather becomes hot and silence prevails on the road, it becomes quite dangerous to travel from Kandahar to Helmand. As you come out of Kandahar, there start beautiful sights of green fields and trees but this beauty is rather dangerous and frightening because behind these fields and trees, Taliban attack the members and vehicles of police and army.
These fields and trees are so dense that hundreds of attackers can hide there. It is the reason why, army and police has moved the residents of the houses that were close to the national highway and destroyed their houses. At many places, we saw that many fields were swept and cleaned and trees were chopped down. But the problem did not finish with this. While travelling in the car, one gets surprised by the large number of police and army bases and checkpoints. After travelling for 5 minutes or sometimes less than this, we can see one of these checkpoints.
When you travel further interior in Helmand, to the areas like Nahr-Siraj, Naad-e-Ali, Ainak and others, you come up with another scene in summer. The fields are all beautifully covered by the multi-colored poppy flowers. In these areas, a person who grows anything other than narcotics is considered to be abnormal.
Every year, handsome funds allotted for the eradication of poppy cultivation is wasted in a well-organized drama. In every district, a strong person is provided with lucrative money to destroy the crops of poppy. He hires a group of local laborers who go to the farms and start destroying the poppy crops. But as expected, they face great resistance from the farmers and their Taliban godfathers who attack the workers. These innocent but vulnerable men are provided security by the soldiers of police and national army.
It is very strange that this destruction starts when the poppy field becomes ready for reaping after the hard work of farmers for five to six months. This step is not taken in the harvesting season that starts in February and March.
It is repeatedly claimed that Taliban get financial support from the harvesters and producers of opium, heroine and other narcotics. This claim seems to be sound and reasonable when we see that they get strong support from Taliban while they are left all on their own by the government. The funds allotted for the control of opium reach and circulate within few hands. It is true that this grave problem has not been solved by the allocation of funds and other measures which fly too high from the ground realities.
One of the farmers was very frustrated. Right from the beginning of the reign of Taliban, he had kept cultivating opium. Now he was in a fix. Once, he was told that opium and narcotics can be used as a weapon to weaken the enemy and thus it was both legal and legitimate. After the government of Taliban was thrown over, he started hearing that poppy cultivation is prohibited in Islam and it is against humanity.
This new concept shook his inner world like many other farmers. Then he saw that some of his neighbors left poppy cultivation and instead cultivated wheat, grain and other similar crops but lack of water, electricity, high prices of urea and absence of a proper marketplace and fair pricing soon left them with financial loss and they had no other option except to return back to poppy cultivation.
The problem is both simple and complicated. The cultivation of poppy is done by those who do this when they find no other choice. A number of problems come together to surround them in a way that they find the solution to these problems by making good money from the cultivation of opium.
When they cultivate opium, they get good money to provide their family with good life facilities, pay the ransom to militants, and get their support with some additional money when they get into clash with the government. When they cultivate other crops, they even don’t get enough money to support their families. When they are financially weak, everyone appears to be strong and harsh to them and are dealt with accordingly.
Some of the farmers tried to get a job and look for any other option to support their families but lack of jobs and other financial problems made them change their decision and they again colored their fields with the flowers of poppy.
The biggest problem that hinders the sustainable resolution of this problem is the lack of desire to solve this problem on permanent bases. Heavy funds are allocated from the foreign donors and major part of these funds come into hands who are not willing to curb this problem from its roots because if this problem finished, the inflow of funds will cease and then they will not be able to fill their pockets and fool the others. In the same way, the hands that are involved in this business are so strong and influential that even government hesitates to annoy them. Millions of dollars that are earned from this business are good enough to keep a number of mouths shut.
From almost two decades, world community has made a great hue and cry about the poppy cultivation in Afghanistan. In the same time, billions of dollars have been spent to solve this problem but still we see that Afghanistan is the prime producer of narcotics. In order to solve this problem on permanent bases, the following steps are inevitable:
First of all, a team should be introduced that should be really serious and concerned about this problem. In this regard, all the old players should be removed from the screen because years of experience have taught them enough to find out their way. This team should have full authority to carry out any kind of action and to take necessary steps.
As discovered above, main reason of the cultivation of poppy is the failure of obtaining an honorable income from the cultivation of other crops. In this regard, a handsome amount of money can be allocated to provide farmers with urea, electricity, machinery, seeds and other necessary things on subsidized prices so the cost of production should be decreased. Similarly, their products can be purchased by the government on reasonable prices so that they should be able to earn their livelihood.
An indirect contribution to solve this problem can come from the establishment of new industries and providing respectable jobs for the people. A person whose conscience forces him to leave the cultivation of poppy should be able to find a job in another field of life.
If the above steps were taken, we can hope that this problem would be solved, otherwise, we would be busy in betraying ourselves by our stupid acts and this fire of destruction would keep destroying the lives of many, inside and outside the country.