Abstract

This report looks at changes in opium poppy cultivation from 2005-06 to 2006-07 in two provinces of Afghanistan: Nangarhar in the east of the country and Ghor in the centre. Nangarhar is of particular interest, both because it experienced a comprehensive ban on opium production in the 2004-05 growing season resulting in a 96 percent decline in cultivation over a 12-month period and because, in 2007-08, a ban was once again imposed on the province, reducing levels of cultivation to those not seen since the imposition of the Taliban prohibition in 2000-01. Ghor, a province that has come to opium poppy cultivation much later in the day, serves to highlight both the relatively "footloose" nature of cultivation in Afghanistan, and the market and environmental constraints on more extensive cultivation found in some areas.

Drawing on three years of fieldwork in Nangarhar and Ghor, this report highlights that rural households cultivating opium poppy do not necessarily generate a gross per capita income either above the subsistence level of a dollar a day or greater than nonpoppy cultivating households in the same province. Indeed, the report suggests that in Ghor, persistent opium poppy cultivation is more an indicator of desperation than of wealth. Size of land holdings, land tenure arrangements, number and composition of household members, dependency ratios and the timing of sale can all act against the crop, making a significant contribution to the socioeconomic status of the household. At the same time, many of the households that did cultivate opium poppy in 2007-08 in Nangarhar and Ghor currently lack viable alternatives through which to meet their basic needs.

This report shows that dramatic reductions in opium poppy cultivation are difficult to sustain because of their powerful negative impact on the welfare of households. Indeed, the return of widespread opium poppy cultivation in Nangarhar in the 2006-07 growing season was rooted in the dramatic reductions in cultivation imposed across the population in 2004-05, recalling the expansion in cultivation across Afghanistan in the early years of the Karzai administration that occurred in response to the Taliban prohibition of 2000-01.

This report suggests that the resurgence in opium poppy cultivation in Nangarhar in 2006-07 was not simply a one-off event resulting from a change in the political environment. Rather, it was part of a cumulative process in which the deteriorating social and economic position of a population affects the local political environment. As the ban on opium imposed a toll on the economic well-being of the population in Nangarhar, that population in turn changed its level of support for the government. To impose a comprehensive ban on opium poppy in such an environment is to invite destabilisation - a risk of which provincial governors and district administrators are acutely aware.

This report also shows the effects of both eradication and crop failure when households lack viable alternatives to opium poppy cultivation. Eradication in Nangarhar during the 2005-06 growing season proved ineffective at deterring cultivation in the districts of Achin, upper Shinwar and Khogiani the following year. Sustained crop failure over a number of years in Ghor has not prevented opium poppy cultivation in those areas where the population has limited livestock and rain-fed land.

Households that persist in growing poppy in these provinces do not have a consistent, natural predisposition to favour the crop (though some may) or an inherent bent toward "illegality". In Ghor, farmers who continue to cultivate opium poppy do so because they do not have livestock in which to invest and increasingly have fewer nonfarm income opportunities both within the province and across the border in Iran. In Nangarhar, those with better access to resources, as well as greater proximity to the labour and agricultural commodity markets of Jalalabad and Kabul, refrain from opium poppy cultivation; it is those with fewer assets and greater distance to markets who continue to cultivate the crop. This evidence supports two important findings: despite claims to the contrary, the returns on opium poppy are not unassailable; and, those who cultivate the crop are not the wealthiest members of a community.

This report further highlights the need for a high degree of caution when interpreting the data around opium poppy cultivation, in particular, explanations of changing levels of opium poppy cultivation. Explanations of fluctuations in cropping patterns that are firmly rooted in the language of the "political commitment" of the local authorities tend to overlook the wider socioeconomic, political and environmental conditions that influence both opium production and the broader livelihood strategies within which opium poppy cultivation takes place.

Too often, such explanations confuse correlation with causality, and attribute reductions in cultivation to the commitment of the local authorities and the effects of counter-narcotics messaging rather than natural events such as crop failure and increasing levels of precipitation, or a change in the economic environment - or both. Perhaps more importantly, such explanations tend to overlook the impact of reductions in opium poppy cultivation on the welfare of the local population and, therefore, tend to neglect whether a change in the level of cultivation will prove sustainable. Ultimately, there is a need for more disaggregated data if the Government of Afghanistan and the international community are to develop a deeper understanding of the nature of the transition from illegal to legal livelihoods; how this differs by time, location and socioeconomic group; and, what tools are most likely to deliver the improvements in economic growth, security and governance that have proved so critical to delivering sustained reductions in opium poppy cultivation in other source countries as well as in those districts around the provincial centre of Nangarhar.