Afghanistan: Multipronged Drug-Eradication Effort Set For Helmand

by Ahto Lobjakas

An Afghan police narcotics burn near Kabul in October 2006 (epa)

LASHKAR GAH, January 30, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- Afghan police and a provincial force are set to begin a poppy-eradication campaign in the southern Helmand Province -- targeting roughly one-tenth of the opium-poppy crops that provide about half of the heroin that reaches Europe. NATO forces will support the effort, which includes about 600 Afghan and auxiliary police, along with a force assembled by Helmand Governor Assadullah Wafa. RFE/RL spoke with Mark Norton, first secretary for counternarcotics at the British Embassy in Afghanistan and pointman for the Western support for the Helmand campaign.

RFE/RL: Could you please give an overview of the eradication campaign about to start in Helmand under the auspices of the Afghan government with NATO support?

Mark Norton: Well the first thing I'd say is that eradication is Afghan-led, so what we're doing is supporting the Afghan government in their own eradication effort. Down here they've split it in two, there's a deployment of the Afghan Eradication Force. They're already in [Helmand] province, and due to start eradicating very soon. It will be manual and mechanical eradication -- that means basically men with sticks knocking down poppies, and mechanical is tractor and all-terrain vehicle dragging harrow across the poppy and destroying it that way...

The other [concurrent] type of eradication is governor-led -- that's entirely up to the governor, in this case Governor Wafa, [and] what he wants to do. But in anticipation of a request to assist him -- he's already told us that he intends to conduct a vigorous and aggressive eradication campaign throughout the province -- we've purchased 80 tractors and harrows, which we'll be giving to the governor's office to add to the, I think, 37 he already has. That will put 117 tractors at his disposal to go out and eradicate."

RFE/RL: Do you have any specific target areas or is the campaign going to cover the entire province?

Norton: I'll come back to what I said originally -- that this is Afghan-led and, indeed, the Afghan government does have target areas.... I could talk generally about the targeting -- the targeting is based on areas which are developed; have had some development, could see more development; when it's secure; areas where crops grow easily, crops other than poppy; and areas which are safe for the Afghan Eradication Force and other eradicators to operate in.

RFE/RL: The eradicators wouldn't then be working within the field of the Taliban, in the north of Helmand, for example?

Norton: It's entirely up to the governor, where he decides it's safe to go. I can't really speculate on which areas he might consider meet those criteria.

RFE/RL: Britain leads within [the International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF] in the field of counternarcotics. For a number of years now, however, according to UN figures, poppy production has been going up steadily. What needs to be done to curb it?

Norton: This province in particular is pretty lawless, and that is the difficulty -- that there is little control by the government [of] what people do and do not do. My feeling is that a lot of the poppy is grown here by people who are greedy, not needy, not by people who have to grow poppy. They're growing it for a profit. They're not being forced to grow it, they choose to grow it, and they do it because they can get away with it.