Taliban reiterates call for poppy eradication assistance

Taliban officials on Wednesday reiterated their disappointment over the lack of forthcoming assistance from the international community, following what they describe as the complete eradication of poppy cultivation from Afghanistan. While reaffirming their pledge to continue enforcing the ban, the Islamic Emirate [Taliban] High Commission for Drug Control told IRIN that it was the right of Afghans to expect more. “The ball is with the UN and international agencies with regard to poppy cultivation,” said Abdol Hamid Akhondzadeh, director of the Commission in the Afghan capital, Kabul. “If they want to eradicate it completely, they need to develop alternative crop projects and other development projects in this area to encourage farmers not to grow poppy in the future.” According to Akhondzadeh, the Taliban has always considered the problem of poppy eradication as a humanitarian issue, and called on the international community to view it the same way - and not as a political issue. “We have done what needed to be done, putting our people and our farmers through immense difficulties.” Having saved millions of people throughout the world from the threat of future drug addiction, the Taliban “expected to be rewarded for our actions, but instead were punished with additional sanctions”, he said. “It is the right of the Afghan people to expect the international community to help them. The world wanted Afghans not to cultivate poppy and we have stopped this. It is our right to expect assistance now,” Akhondzadeh said. “Our agreement to ban poppy cultivation on 29 July 2000 was without any preconditions... This will be enforced so long as the Islamic Emirate exists,” he added. Regarding the issue of remaining poppy stocks from last year’s harvest, he said the Taliban wanted the people of Afghanistan to be free of poppy cultivation, including the stocks still existing. “To date we have not received any response from the international community as to what should be done on this account,” he said. Akhondzadeh described the poppy ban as a major economic issue for the people in the area. Many of the poppy farmers were extended credit based on this year’s harvest and, following the ban on cultivation, were now in dire financial straits, he said. During an international drug agency mission to the area at the end of April, Akhondzadeh proposed that international pharmaceutical companies be invited to Afghanistan to purchase the remaining stock. “Afghanistan would then be completely free of poppy, the farmers would be duly compensated, and the stocks would be used for a useful purpose - in the making of medicines,” he said. Meanwhile, the question of whether the ban can be maintained next year remains unclear. “This is the million dollar question,” WFP Deputy Country Director for Afghanistan Peter Goosens told IRIN. “The real question is whether they can afford to adhere to the ban.” Goosens said no one really expected that the ban to be effective, and virtual eradication had “surprised everyone”. He warned, however, that farmers under dire economic circumstances might have to return to poppy cultivation. “If we want to have a go at it, we have to come up with some scheme to support the transition of poppy to other crops for these farmers, and this hasn’t happened yet,” he added. Over the past decade, Afghanistan has been the world’s leading producer of opium. Bernard Frahi, head of the UN’s drug control programme in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, told IRIN on Thursday that the final conclusions of a recent mission to assess the extent of the Taliban’s ban on opium poppy cultivation would be available in two weeks. That mission visited five provinces, including the eastern province of Nangarhar and the southern province of Helmand: the two regions responsible for the most of Afghanistan’s previous poppy cultivation. Frahi said the team, comprising representatives from six countries, found that there had been no poppy cultivation this year. He said it was evident to the mission that this absence of poppy cultivation was due to last year’s ban by the Taliban authorities, rather than the prolonged drought afflicting Afghanistan.