Protest against opium eradication

The poppy eradication campaign in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar was interrupted on Wednesday by an armed encounter between police and protesters, local authorities told IRIN. The clash came a day after hundreds of people in the Maiwand district, 70 km southwest Kandahar city, had showed their anger in a demonstration against a government campaign to destroy poppy fields in the troubled province, which is one of the leading poppy cultivating provinces in Afghanistan. On Wednesday, protesters reportedly gathered in front of the district headquarters, throwing stones at police officers. According to the Ministry of the Interior (MoI), four farmers and one police officer were injured during clashes between protesters and the Central Poppy Eradication Force (CPEF). Dozens of villagers gathered and started throwing stones at the poppy eradication force and then both sides opened fire with assault rifles, local police said. Early reports indicated that six demonstrators and two police were injured. Local media reported that one villager was killed in the encounter, but there has been no official confirmation of the death. The United Nations has warned that Afghanistan is in danger of turning into a narco-state after the country produced 4,600 mt of opium in 2004, which accounted for more than 80 percent of the world’s illicit heroin. Responding to keen international pressure, the Afghan government is aiming for a 50 percent reduction in illegal opium output in 2005. The government hopes to achieve this through a combination of eradication of the growing crop and assisting growers to find alternative sustainable livelihoods. But this target will be hard to achieve in such a short space of time, Western diplomats in the capital Kabul have told IRIN. Hikmatullah, a poppy grower in Maiwand, told IRIN that the government had promised to provide farmers like himself with alternative livelihoods in conjunction with eradication of the plant. “But it did not happen and they came to destroy our valuable crop without any compensation or assistance to find other ways of surviving.” The angry farmer said that he had tried to stop cultivating poppy in 2004, hoping to get some assistance from the government or aid agencies. “We are poor people and we cannot feed our children if the government does not support,” he said. Local security forces said they had given the farmers due warning that selective eradication of the illegal crop would soon commence in the district. “We had already informed the people not to cultivate the poppy, and that we would eradicate poppy fields,” Abdul Rahman, deputy of the police anti-narcotics department in Kandahar, told IRIN. The incident in Mainwand was the first public reported protest against government poppy eradication campaigns in the east and south of the country in 2005. In Kandahar province, Rahman admitted that the authorities had not offered poppy farmers any incentives to desist in growing the plant due to a lack of resources. Kandahar police said the eradication operation was suspended until further talks with local people. According to the MoI, Kandahar governor Gul Agha Shirzoi has been in constant contact with community leaders in the Maiwand District to negotiate a way forward in the dispute.