Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of what has been learned about the role of opium poppy in rural livelihoods in Afghanistan over the last decade. It charts both the development in our own understanding of what influences households in their decisions on cultivation of opium poppy, and the evolution of the role of opium in rural livelihoods, particularly in the wake of the Taliban prohibition on opium poppy in 2000 and concerted efforts to reduce cultivation in Nangarhar province in 2005.

In documenting these shifts in both the situation on the ground and our analysis of it, this chapter highlights the move by commentators away from a narrow economic rationalist model in which opium poppy cultivation is seen as simply a function of price, toward understanding a more complex picture in which the motivations and factors governing decisions on opium poppy cultivation differ by location and socio-economic group. In this latter model, the focus is on the multi-functional role opium plays in rural livelihood strategies and how a household’s dependency on opium poppy cultivation varies according to its access to assets, including local public goods like governance and security. This evolution in our understanding of what influences households’ in whether to engage in opium poppy cultivation, and to what degree, it is critical for developing both drug control and development polices that are more appropriate to the different actors involved in opium production.

The focus of the chapter is very much on the rural household. While any illicit economy presents fundamental research problems, currently the rural household continues to be the most accessible unit of analysis when looking at the opium economy in Afghanistan and offers a wide range of literature and research for cross referencing findings.1 Debates regarding the previous collapse of governance in Afghanistan and how it allowed traffickers to operate without restraint and has allowed corruption to flourish, though important for understanding the wider environment in which opium poppy cultivation occurs, are not discussed here (see in particular Chapters 6 and 7).

It is important to note this chapter does not seek to offer a definitive account of opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, as the situation is far too dynamic for that. Instead it presents the current state of knowledge regarding opium poppy cultivationand how different types of households have responded to the evolving environment in their particular regions or settings.

The overall theme of the chapter is that of diversity. The next section provides an overview of diversity in the incidence of opium poppy cultivation across provinces, regions, and districts, emphasizing the localised nature of opium poppy cultivation. The third section discusses diversity in rural livelihood strategies in Afghanistan and how these vary based on the different assets and capabilities rural households are able to draw upon. The fourth section documents diversity in motivations and factors that influence households in their decision to produce opium and how this differs by socio-economic group. It outlines a broad typology of households engaged in opium poppy cultivation and shows an inverse relationship between the level of dependency on opium production and an individual household’s access to assets. The fifth section uses this typology to sketch out the diversity in the responses households have adopted in reaction to efforts to curb opium poppy cultivation, drawing heavily from detailed fieldwork carried out by the author in Nangarhar province in eastern Afghanistan. The final section looks at the diversity in policy and operational responses required to address the complex nature of illicit opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan if a sustainable solution is to be found.

The chapter concludes that there is a need for policy makers and development practitioners to better recognise in their work the diversity that is so evident both among opium poppy cultivators and across rural Afghanistan. To do otherwise would not only undermine the basic principles of equitable development but could work against the wider state-building and security efforts. For households with diverse livelihood opportunities and who are not dependent on opium production, eradication or the threat of it, combined with the establishment of the necessary governance and security conditions needed for longer-term economic growth, can raise the opportunity cost of opium poppy cultivation and facilitate its abandonment. However, in areas where opium poppy cultivation is most concentrated and where legal livelihoods are limited, eradication can serve to further marginalise already vulnerable socio-economic groups, resulting in pauperisation, migration, and damage to the nascent relationship between citizen and state. Based on the analysis presented in this paper, it is evident that it would be an error to pursue a uniform approach, either in development or in drug control work, which ignores the realities faced by particular socio-economic groups involved in opium poppy cultivation and the varying degrees of their dependency on the crop.