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Contrasting Images of Power and Poppy in the Provinces of Balkh

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Contrasting Images of Power and Poppy in the Provinces of Balkh David Mansfield, 8 April 2014 Our Friends in the North: Contrasting Images of Power and Poppy in the ii Provinces of Balkh and Badakhshani As 2013 ended and 2014 began the rural population in the provinces of Balkh and Badakhshan were subject to quite contrasting experiences of the state and state power. In Balkh, the governor Atta Mohammad Noor had further strengthened his hand and was reasserting his position in parts of the province where only two years ago his hold had been more tenuous. At the same time in Badakhshan the state was on the backfoot, concerned about growing insurgent presence and how the actions of those in positions of power might be seen by a rural population that showed increasing signs of unrest. 'The Cock of the North'iii: Governor Atta's concentration of coercive power in Balkh As 2013 came to a close, farmers in the province of Balkh, in the districts of Chimtal, Chahar Bolak, Dehdadi and Sholgara, talked of the Governor, Atta Mohammed Noor consolidating his power and successfully marginalising his political and military opponents. Indeed, while there were the ubiquitous complaints from the rural population about corruption by government officials and a lack of development assistance there were few who doubted Governor Atta's fortitude and resilience, even in districts such as Chahar Bolak and Chimtal where only two years prior there had been a growing insurgent presence. Locally, Atta's long term rivals in Balkh, uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum of Jumbish, and the pashtun commander Juma Khan Hamdard, who had previously fought on the side of Hezbi Islami (Hekmatyar) before becoming the Governor of Paktya,iv were viewed as weak and unable to challenge Atta's primacy. The Taliban were also said to have lost territory to Governor Atta and his supporters who he had successfully armed under the Afghan Local Police (ALP) initiative. Illustrative of the extent of Atta's coercive power was the campaign to stamp out opium poppy cultivation in the districts of Chimtal and Chahar Bolak which the Governor had launched in the last few weeks of 2013. This campaign followed the crops resurgence in the area in the 2012/2013 growing season and the province officially losing its 'poppy free' status for the first time since 2007.v While some farmers claimed cultivation had been on the rise since 2009 due to the growing insecurity that had accompanied the last presidential campaign and the decision by regional leaders supporting both Karzai and Abdullah to arm their supporters,vi the United Nations estimated that opium production had reached only 410 hectare in 2013 - still considerably less than the 7, 233 hectares reported in 2006 when cultivation had last been officially reported in the province.vii By late 2013 farmers were of the view that further cultivation would not be tolerated; and this was not a province where farmers simply heard the same old counternarcotics messages on the radio year-in- year-out. In Balkh province the deputy provincial security commander Razzaq Qaderi had already taken personal responsibility for efforts to deter planting as of late 2013 and had travelled to a number of districts in person to instruct farmers not to cultivate opium. Units of the ALP in Chimtal and Chahar Bolak had also informed those that had planted the crop that they faced arrest and that their crop would be destroyed. In Chimtal it was said that the ALP 'walked the fields' looking for opium poppy. Some farmers were said to have elected to destroy their own crop fearful of arrest, choosing to plough it over at night so as to attract less attention from the authorities. By early January only a few poppy fields remained; a few solitary farmers with land 'far from the road' who hoped that their crop might go unnoticed, or that come spring, those running the eradication campaign would not bother to traipse across the fields of others just to destroy a few jeribs of opium poppy. 1 David Mansfield, 8 April 2014 The resolute actions by the provincial and district authorities in Balkh so early in the 2013/14 growing season stood in contrast to many provinces, and followed on from what many farmers considered a robust eradication campaign in the districts of Chimtal and Chahar Bolak the previous growing season. In both districts farmers complained that there had been few opportunities to avoid the destruction of their crop in the spring of 2013. They argued that the presence of multiple and competing agencies - the Afghan National Army (ANA), the Afghan National Police (ANP), the Afghan Local Police (ALP) and the National Directorate of Security (NDS) - resulted in a campaign where there was 'more soldiers than poppy' and that it was almost impossible to bribe members of the eradication team with so many onlookers. The result was a campaign that destroyed all the cropviii that it came across; not the kind of negotiated effort that could be seen elsewhere, such as in the provinces of Badakhshan (see below) and Nangarhar. Some farmers even complained that the loss of their opium crop in the spring of 2013 was followed by a further campaign of crop destruction in the summer when their cannabis plants were also destroyed. For many it remains a mystery why the Governor has been so pro-active in his desire to maintain a poppy free province. He has often said that he has gained little from the international community in terms of promised development assistance for his counternarcotics efforts.ix Moreover, while he has received some political acclaim for his efforts it has often been short-lived. For example, even at the point that cultivation was brought down from 7,233 hectares in 2006 to 'poppy-free' the following year, ‘success’ quickly turned to skepticism when the international media and commentators claimed those that had abandoned opium poppy had simply replaced it with cannabis,x despite the considerable doubts over the methodology and the veracity of UNODC’s estimate as to the extent of cannabis cultivation - not just in Balkh but nationally.xi By 2012 it had become almost the norm that Balkh was ‘poppy free’ – there was no song and dance about it; no acclaim even though there had been six consecutive years with negligible levels of cultivation - unprecedented for a province that was once considered a major producer and where cultivation once topped 10,000 hectares. Neither did the return to cultivation in 2013 attract much opprobrium from the international community, particularly given that in the run up to transition in 2014 and the end of the combat mission for international military forces most donors wish to avoid talking about the scale of opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan and what it might mean for the viability of the Afghan state. Instead, the real motivation for Balkh to continue as a 'poppy free' province appears to come from Governor Atta himself. It seems to be genuinely important to him, not because others care and that he might be rewarded for his efforts, but because he cares and he has the power to do something about it. Perhaps the real reason why the governor remains so proactive in his pursuit of low levels of drug crop cultivation is less one of projecting the appearance of state power on an international stage - as most efforts to prohibit opium poppy in Afghanistan are designed to do - and more an attempt to concentrate real power by limiting the funding of Atta's political and military competitors within the province. After all, drugs crops are what Snyder and Bhavnani (2005)xii views as a good example of 'lootable resources' - 'high value goods with low economic barriers to entry' - that are notoriously difficult for both private and public actors to establish monopoly control over. Moreover, as an illegal good, state actors find it even more challenging to appropriate the revenues from opium and cannabis without facing sanction from the international community. On this basis it is possible that the ban on opium in Balkh is not simply an example of Governor Atta's concentration of power but part of his strategy for achieving it. It is also possible to see how many farmers in the province of Balkh can currently refrain from opium poppy cultivation - or at least not pursue violent resistance as a response to the state's eradication 2 David Mansfield, 8 April 2014 efforts. With larger irrigated landholdings than are found amongst those cultivating opium poppy in provinces like Nangarhar and Badakhshan, and a growing level of crop diversification it is easier for farmers to maintain food security in districts like Chahar Bolak and Chimtal without recourse to opium poppy cultivation.xiii As the example below shows, with twenty jeribs of land and two crops per year an average household can earn more than USD 1 per person per day, even without access to non farm income and despite the destruction of their opium crop.xiv This is not an option available to many farmers in other provinces where much smaller landholdings and high population densities have made non farm income a critical component of the coping strategy of households compelled to abandon opium production by the state. The real question, however, is what will happen to the local economy should there be a significant fall in public and private investment in the province after transition in 2014? There are already signs of a fewer wage labour opportunities in Mazar and daily wage labour opportunities have fallen over the last year amidst signs of a general economic downturn in Afghanistan.xv Were security in other parts of the country to worsen, and the markets of Kabul and beyond be blocked to the farmers of Balkh, the pressure to return to opium poppy cultivation would increase significantly.
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