Opium in Afghanistan
Abstract
The world’s greatest producer of illicit opium since 1992 is Afghanistan. Since the United States started occupying Afghanistan in 2001, the production of opium has been rising. The UNODC reported that Afghanistan has been producing more opium from 2004-2007. Also in Latin America, the production of opium utilizes more land than coca. In 2007, Afghan produced 92 percent of the world’s opium production. The sales of these opium production amounted to 4 billion dollars. Additionally, Afghanistan also produces the more cannabis than any other country globally. This entire example proves how valuable opium is to the economy of Afghanistan. Opium has both positive and negative impacts to Afghanistan. In this paper, I will discuss both the benefits and disadvantages of the production of opium in Afghanistan. While I do this, I will tackle issues concerning the war in Afghanistan and the contribution of the drug in this war, drug trafficking and the medicinal value of opium to Afghanistan.
The current war in Afghanistan
After the economy of Afghanistan had fallen because of lack of a source of earning revenue, the farmers in the country decided to focus on growing the illicit drug. In 2001, under the support of the United Nations, Afghan leaders met in Germany to discuss the devastating economy of the nation. The United Kingdom became the country that addressed the issue of narcotics. After the meeting, Afghanistan implemented its constitution and conducted the elections (Scott, 2003). In 2004, Hamid became the president of Afghanistan. In the next three growing seasons, opium production increased drastically. The farmers reported that the officials of the government accepted bribes to assume the drug trade and punished some opium growers.
Another inhibitor to the poppy culture in Afghanistan is that the Afghan warlords and the US forces are reluctant to collaborate in looking for drug traffickers. The warlords control the trade of opium and they assist the US forces in offering local intelligence, scouting and preventing the insurgencies from Taliban and Al-Qaeda (Rotberg, 2007). While the allied forces and the United States fight the trading of drugs in Afghanistan, their effort has been inhibited since there are numerous drug traffickers who are the top official in the government of Karzai. The past estimates of UNODC prove that 52 percent of the Afghan GDP is approximately $2.7 billion per year, and the drug is the cause of this development.
The growth in opium production is caused by the reducing situation of security because production because this production is low in places that are more secure. Some people in Afghanistan believe that opium production should not be banned in the country because it is the biggest income earner in the country. The number of people who participate in the production of opium is approximately 3.3 million people. The profits that Afghanistan achieves form opium are more that the profits that it achieves from wheat. Some of the efforts to eradicate the production of opium have been successful, especially in the northern parts of Afghanistan. Atta Mohammad developed a program that reduced the production of opium in Balkh province from 7,200 hectares to nil from the year 2005 to 2007.
Thomas Schweich, who uses to be the principal deputy secretary for the state department of the United States, argued that Hamid Karzai’s government protects the production of opium in Afghanistan plus those of the Taliban (Mason, 2011). He also stated the fact that the military of the United States avoids the issue of production of opium is not vital to the missions of anti-terrorism. In 2010, NATO declined the proposal of Russia for Afghanistan spraying the drug. There have also been accusations that involvement of Europe and America in the Afghan drug trafficking with connections to Taliban.
In 2010, the Russian agents that control narcotics joined America and Afghanistan in the quest to prevent Jalalabad from producing more opium in the country. During this process, the agents managed to destroy approximately 156 kilograms of opium and 932 kilograms of heroin with a value of over $250 million. They also managed to destroy the technical equipment that is used in the production of opium (Macdonald, 2007). This was the first war against illicit drugs that Russian managed to participate. The director of Narcotic control in Russia, Viktor Ivanovo, argued that this promoted the relationships between Washington and Moscow. The president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, argued that the advancement violated the sovereignty of Afghanistan and the world law.
Drug Trafficking
The main supplier of Heroin in Europe for over a decade has been Afghanistan. Since the 1990, Heroin has been entering Europe through the Balkan route in Turkey. This drastically increased drug trafficking from Afghanistan to other parts of Europe like Russia a central Asia. In 2005, the amount of deaths that were caused by drug consumption were approximately 7000, and 70 percent of these deaths were caused by opium (Miller, 2010). With the high rate of drug trafficking from Afghanistan to Europe and the rest of the world, 19.4 tones of the drug was intercepted. The countries that seized the largest amount of drugs in 2005 were France, Greece, Germany and Spain.
Medical production
The council of Senlis insisted on opium legalization for medical reasons. Opium can help in the manufacture of morphine and codeine that can be used as painkillers. The significance of opium in medicine will inhibit the production of illegal opium in Afghanistan. It will also reduce the cost of drugs made from opium and this will make healthcare cheaper for the people who need the drugs. Some people have stated that if opium is legalized, it would not solve the problem, and it would not make it workable. These people argue that the illegal production of the drug would only be stopped if the Afghans had the essential resources and the mechanisms of control or the means to make sure that they were the main buyers of the opium materials. For such people, there is a lack of infrastructure that administers such a strategy (Macdonald, 2007). They argue that with the lack of an effective system of control, drug traffickers would continue to venture into the market, and this would increase the risk of cultivation that would be used fundamentally for unauthorized purposes. This would also increase the competition for the opium in Afghanistan reducing the prices of the drug, and encourage more farmers to grow the drug.
Afghan government has disregarded the cultivation as a way of controlling unauthorized trade of opium. The villagers of Afghanistan have a sturdy control system in “shura” that is supported by the Afghanistan government. The Senlis Council was responsible for developing these concepts that suggests for a technical scheme of licensing the cultivation and the also controls its production. Other people argue that there is little chance that the opium in Afghanistan will be competitive economically in a world market. The main markets for the export of this drug are Turkey, Spain, India, France and Australia. The cost of producing a kilo of morphine is almost $ 450. However, medicine project in Afghanistan can offer an affordable pain reliever for those who experience frequent pain.
The price of illegal opium is far beyond that of the legal ones. While there are several reasons behind poppy cultivation, one of the main reasons is that the poppy farmers always depend on the growing of the illicit drug for income generation. Traffickers continue to exploit the illegal market, and this would not be changed by legalization. The demand for illegal opium would hardly reduce even if Afghanistan used the drug for legal purposes, and this would create more opportunities for exploitation by the drug traffickers. Presently, most of opium in Afghanistan is used in illegal trade and in some cases used in the activities of some terrorists. While there have been numerous efforts to eliminate the illicit drug in Afghanistan, its production has drastically increased.
The control board of Narcotics argues that surplus production of the drug in 2000 has attributed to the extra export to other countries, and this would cause more demand for the rest of years to come. However, the WHO pointed out that there has been a decline in the production of drugs like codeine and morphine that largely depends on the production of opium. The Narcotics drug convention that was held in 1961 proposed that countries ought to be permitted to grow the drug for medicinal purposes and not other purposes.
The effect of opium on the economy of Afghanistan
In 2004, the UNDP listed Afghanistan at number 173 out of 177 amongst the countries that have developed. One of the main reasons why the country depends on the production of opium is the economic development. The revenues got from exportation of the drug have made the country shift from mere production of traditional crops to production of opium. While only 12 percent of Afghanistan is arable, seventy percent of the inhabitants of the nation rely on Agriculture as a source of revenue. When the economy of the nation used to be stable, the country would produce sufficient food to feed its people plus an export surplus (Jalali, Oakley
& Hunter, 2006). The traditional crops that Afghanistan grows are grapes, nuts, fruits, cotton, rice, barely, corn and wheat. However, these crops were not selling enough to make the nation have a stable economy. When the country introduced the growth of opium, the state of the economy changed drastically to a stable one.
The trade of opium in Afghanistan has had a more significant impact on the lives of people in Afghanistan compared to the trade of livestock and wheat. While the Afghan famers sued to depend a lot on farming of wheat, the introduction of opium cultivation has improved the earnings of these farmers, even if the trade of the drug is risky. Additionally, the demand for opium has augmented, and women have had an equal opportunity to participate in the production of the drug as much as the men. The rugged terrain of the country promotes local autonomy, which means that people are more committed to producing opium for economic benefits.
The economy of Afghanistan has improved such that it solely depends on opium. While, in 2006, less than four percent of Afghan land was used to grow opium, the drug still generated annual revenue of more than $ 3 billion. This reflects to over 35 percent of the nation’s national product. Antonia Costa argues that the top employers of the Afghan people have been the transportation, processing and cultivation of opium. Currently, the number of people who participate in the cultivation of the drug in Afghanistan is nearly 3 million. This figure represents 10 percent of the entire Afghan population. While opium improves the economy of the nation, the poor farmers of the drug get less than twenty percent of income that is achieved from the sale of the drug. The remaining eighty percent goes to the hands of the drug traffickers and the politicians. International drug dealers and traffickers also manage to get high profits from the sale of the drug.
It is commonly known that the opium produced in Afghanistan is rarely processed to heroin with Afghanistan. The greedy kingpins and drug traffickers have managed to step up the processing of heroin in their areas of reach. The labs that process heroin have achieved hefty profits since 1990, especially in the southern region that had proved to be quite unstable for several years (Glaze 2007). Since the rule of law has been lacking and the presence of Taliban in the southern parts of the nation, the production of the illicit drug has increased drastically. In 2007, the UNODC reported that Afghanistan produces opium that amounted to about 8000 tones. In this year, the production of opium is expected to increase, and this will further boost the economy of Afghanistan.
The drug traffickers connect with the terrorist groups and the insurgents like the Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Since there is a lot of instability in the nation, the cultivation of opium is possible, and the revenue got from the sales is used by these insurgents and terrorists to buy weapons. When the terrorists have weapons, they are most likely going to participate in illegal activities. Opium production is what makes them get the resources to buy weapons and if the sale of opium drops, this insurgence may lose a lot. In fact, the kingpins hoard the drugs in surplus such that when the price of the drugs increases, they can sell more of it. The insurgence will always have all the resources they need if they want to conduct terrorism within the nation.
Opium Impact in the Afghan villages
Apart from the obvious risk of getting addicted to the drug, its production also changes the lives of the villages in Afghanistan. The villages used to be inhabited by poor people, but with the introduction of opium farming, there have been a number of people who have gotten wealth because of the sale of opium. The young men have gotten so wealthy that they have lacked the respect for the old men in the village. The production of opium has also brought a change in the way families, neighbors and other relationships amongst people in the Afghan villages. The younger generation has now understood better way of interacting with foreign countries, and they have come to learn of the different ways of conducting traditional duties. The relationship between the youngsters and the older people has become quite tensed. The trust that used to exist among people in the Afghan villages has change because, with the wealth acquired, most people have resorted to self-interests rather than group interests (Glaze 2007).The wars have also highly affected the changes in the way people relate in the Afghan villages. With the wealth that people can acquire from production of opium, there have also been cases of corruption in the government of Afghanistan. The rule of law was also abolished because of some greedy people in office, especially the police. The farmers in the villages have always bribed the police to involve in drug trafficking. Drug traffickers also pay the police so that they can be ignored while they conduct their illegal activities.
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