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An Analysis of the Process of Expansion of Opium Poppy Cultivation to New Districts in Afghanistan

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STRATEGIC STUDY #1

Preliminary Report JUNE 1998

The Strategic Studies Series

One of UNDCP's principal objectives is to strengthen international action against illicit drug production. In Afghanistan, its principal objective is to reduce and eventually eliminate existing and potential sources of opium cultivation. It is recognised that in order to achieve this there is a need to further the understanding of the diversity of conditions and priorities that different socio-economic and spatial groups take into account when making decisions about their involvement in opium cultivation.

The Strategic Study Series is one of the tools by which UNDCP intends to document the process of lesson learning within the ongoing Afghanistan Programme. Studies in this series will focus on issues that are considered to be of strategic importance to improving the design of current and future alternative development initiatives in Afghanistan. Information collection for these studies is undertaken by the UNDCP Drug Control Monitoring System (AFG/C27) in close coordination with the ongoing presence and project activities of UNDCP's Poppy Reduction project (AFG/C28). Recognising the inherent problems associated with undertaking research into the drugs issue in Afghanistan, emphasis is given to verifying findings through systematic information-gathering techniques and methodological pluralism. As such, the Studies will be undertaken in an iterative manner, seeking to consolidate preliminary findings with further fieldwork. It is envisaged that this approach will allow panel or longitudinal studies to be undertaken which assess both the changes in opium cultivation and lives and livelihoods amongst different socio-economic, gender and spatial groups over the lifetime of the Afghanistan programme.

These Strategic Studies will be an integral part of the regional study, "The Dynamics of the Illicit Opiate Industry in South West Asia" due to be published and disseminated in early 2001. The purpose of this regional study will be to: (i) contextualise the illicit drugs situation in South West Asia for the donor community, addressing issues of interest to their development agendas, including poverty, health, gender and the environment (ii) and for UNDCP to identify ?best practice' in the design and implementation of alternative development, law enforcement and demand reduction initiatives.

Strategic Studies will include:

• An Analysis of the Process of Expansion of Opium Poppy Cultivation to New Districts in Afghanistan.
• The Dynamics of Farmgate Opium Trade and the Coping Strategies of Opium Traders.
• The Role of Opium as a Source of Informal Credit.
• The Role of Opium as a Livelihood Strategy for Returnees.
• Access to Labour: The dynamics of the labour market for opium poppy in Afghanistan.
• The Role of Women in Poppy Cultivation in Afghanistan and the Consequences Arising from its Replacement for Women's Economic and Social Standing.
• ?The Balloon Effect': An Analysis of the Process of Relocation of Opium Poppy Cultivation in Afghanistan.

Executive Summary

Experience has shown that alternative development has been closely associated with reductions in drug crop cultivation at the local level. Households have been found to abandon coca and opium cultivation despite their reported unassailable profitability. Moreover, off-farm income opportunities and alternative cropping systems have led to increases in income in both absolute terms and relative to drug crops. However, despite certain localised successes drug crop cultivation continues to increase, often in areas adjacent to project locations.

This Study seeks to explore the socio- economic processes that have facilitated the expansion of opium poppy cultivation into new areas of cultivation in Afghanistan. The fieldwork was conducted in the districts of Qargahayi and Mehterlam in Laghman and Azro district in Logar. In order to distinguish between generic and context specific issues in-depth interviews were conducted over a wide geographical area within these three districts. To broaden the analytical base of this study further household interviews will be conducted in other districts where opium poppy has been cultivated for the first time in 1998. Interviews will also be undertaken in new districts and provinces should new areas come under opium poppy cultivation in subsequent years.

Interviews focused on a number of key issues relating to the possible motivations and circumstances that influence households in their decision to begin opium poppy cultivation, including increasing vulnerability, scattered land holdings, land tenure arrangements, reverse conditionality, and the activities of traffickers and their intermediaries.

Although this document represents an initial phase of a Study that will be consolidated with further fieldwork in other locations during 1999 and 2000, preliminary findings would suggest that:

• In its initial year of cultivation in both Laghman and Logar, opium poppy is often undertaken by owner-cultivators on an experimental basis. As such opium poppy cultivation tends to be restricted to a small number of households in any one location during its initial year of cultivation. These small plots of opium poppy provoke the interest of neighbouring households much like any agricultural demonstration plot, raising the threat of expansion in subsequent years.
  
• The interdependent nature of labour markets and commercial trade between districts, combined with cross district ethnic and family links, has led to a high degree of exposure to opium cultivation in both Laghman and Logar. In particular a number of respondents had family members who worked as itinerant opium poppy harvesters in neighbouring districts during periods of agricultural underemployment.
  
• The expansion of opium poppy new areas of cultivation would appear be facilitated by itinerant poppy harvesters. The prevalence of poppy in the districts of Nangarhar and the labour intensive nature of the poppy harvest would seem to have provided significant employment opportunities for migrant labourers from both within Nangarhar and neighbouring provinces. For those migrants who are willing to travel between climatic zones, opium poppy provides the opportunity of securing two months employment during its harvest. The interdependence of the labour market between these different climatic zones would suggest that any strategy aimed at reducing opium cultivation in one district would also need to address on and off-farm income opportunities for labourers from neighbouring districts. A failure to absorb the surplus in labour supply caused by a reduction in opium poppy cultivation may provoke itinerant harvesters to search for employment opportunities in neighbouring districts. Given the suitability of the environmental conditions in most of Afghanistan and the particular skills these migrants have to offer, relocation of opium poppy cultivation may be a possible response.
  
• Respondents did not attribute an economic value to household labour in the assessment of the total costs of agricultural inputs. Providing alternative income earning opportunities for family members, including women, might increase the opportunity cost households associate with opium cultivation and thereby reduce its perceived profitability.
  
• Traders do not appear to take a pro-active role in the expansion of opium cultivation. In the initial year of cultivation only one household was found to have been approached by traders either during the time of planting or at harvest. However, in subsequent years it was reported that traders offered advances and visited households at the farmgate in order to purchase opium. This may suggest that the farmgate trade in opium is not highly structured but a relatively free market that follows market signals rather than creates them.