Afghanistan refuses to spray heroin poppies

Afghanistan’s heroin-producing poppies will not be sprayed with herbicide this year despite a record crop in 2006 and US pressure for President Hamid Karzai to allow the drug-fighting tactic.

Karzai’s Cabinet decided to hold off on using chemicals for now, according to Said Mohammad Azam, spokesman for Afghanistan’s Ministry of Counter Narcotics.

“There will be no ground spraying this year,” Azam said in Kabul.

However, Karzai told foreign and Afghan officials this week that if Afghanistan’s poppy crop was not reduced this year he would allow spraying in 2008, according to a Western official.

He said there would be more pressure to destroy poppy crops with “traditional” techniques – typically sending teams of labourers into fields to batter down or plough in the plants before they can be harvested.

“If it works, that is fine,” Azam said. “If it does not, next year ground spraying will be in the list of options.”

Fuelled by the Taliban, a powerful drug mafia and the need for a profitable crop that can overcome drought, opium production from poppies in Afghanistan last year rose 49 per cent to 6,700 tonnes – enough to make about 670 tonnes of heroin. That’s more than 90 per cent of the world’s supply and more than the world’s addicts consume in a year.

However, Afghans are deeply opposed to aerial spraying, and Karzai has said herbicides pose too big a risk of contaminating water, killing legal crops and harming local residents. Any chemicals would have been spread at ground level, not by planes.

The decision caps months of behind-the-scenes pressure from the US for Karzai to allow a technique already used in countries such as Colombia. Afghan officials have deployed similar arguments in previous years to reject spraying.

“We always said that the ground based spraying is a decision for the Afghans to make,” said Joe Mellott, the spokesman for the US Embassy in Afghanistan. “So we understand they are going to focus on a robust manual and mechanical programme to eradicate poppies this year,” he said.

The US will provide assistance in that, Mellott said, and also “if they want to use herbicide”.

John Walters, director of the US Office of National Drug Control Policy, said last month that that poppies would be sprayed, although he did not say when. Walters, on a December visit to Kabul, said Afghanistan could turn into a narco-state unless “giant steps” were made toward eliminating poppies.

However, no top Afghan officials have said publicly that the government would carry out spraying.

US Ambassador Ronald Neumann said this week that Afghanistan had already eradicated 600 hectares of poppies this year.

US and Afghan officials agree that eradication must be matched with a crackdown on traffickers and programs to help farmers switch to legal crops.

“We have done an enormous amount of alternative livelihood, but you are not going to have a full meaning of alternatives until we build a rural economy and until you can move a crop to the market,” Neumann said.

Few crops in Afghanistan can be transported far without spoiling or being damaged. By comparison, poppy resin, the main ingredient in heroin, is robust and can keep for years.