Abstract

Currently there is considerable attention on the amount of opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, what has been referred to as “the metrics”. On 2 September 2006, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) announced that opium poppy cultivation had reached an unprecedented level of 165,000 hectares (ha) in 2006 an increase of 59% since 2005. However, it is important to look at these figures in context. Two thirds of the estimated total amount of cultivation in 2006 lies in the southern provinces of Helmand (69,324 ha), Kandahar (12,619 ha), Farah (7,694 ha), Uruzgan (9,703 ha), Daikundi (7,044 ha) and Zabul (3,210 ha), where there has been a sharp decrease in the level of security over the last year. Of the estimated 61,000 hectare increase in cultivation, 70% is from Helmand alone, 92% from the four southern provinces of Helmand, Uruzgan, Daikundi and Zabul.

Moreover, the top seven opium-producing provinces (Helmand, Badakhshan, Kandahar, Uruzgan, Farah, Balkh, and Daikundi) are responsible for 77% of total cultivation. Cultivation is less prevalent in the other 27 provinces of the country: 6 provinces are reported to be “opium poppy free”, 8 cultivate less than 1,000 ha and 28 provinces less than 5,000 hectares. A further disaggregation of the data to the district level shows an even more complex picture where districts in which opium poppy is concentrated can be found neighbouring areas where the crop is marginal or non-existent. This diversity at the provincial, district, and even sub-district level, suggests that opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan is both contingent and contextual — a function of where, who and when — and therefore highly dependent on local factors.

This particular report looks at the results of fieldwork in two specific provinces in which opium poppy cultivation is cultivated: Nangarhar and Ghor. According to UNODC, both provinces currently cultivate less than 5,000 hectares. However, the two provinces have very distinct histories in relation to opium poppy cultivation, much of which is not captured (and may be lost or even distorted) by an analysis of provincial statistics on the amount of land allocated to the crop. The report charts the role opium poppy plays in rural livelihood strategies within the two provinces and how this differs by the different assets households within these provinces have at their disposal. It documents the impact significant reductions in opium production have had on livelihood strategies in both Nangarhar and Ghor.

The report is part of the Water Management, Livestock and the Opium Economy (WOL) project funded by the European Commission and implemented by the Afghan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU) in cooperation with the Danish Committee for Aid to Afghan Refugees (DACAAR) and German Agro Action (GAA). Fieldwork for this report was undertaken over a two-year period, where possible visiting the same households each year.

The report should be read as a companion to other preliminary studies4 of the WOL research programme and more specifically as a parallel to the study by Adam Pain on opium poppy cultivation in the provinces of Balkh and Kunduz. It should be noted that the research on opium poppy cultivation has been deliberately expanded beyond the core WOL project research sites (Kunduz, Nangarhar, Ghazni and Herat) both to capture wider dynamics of shifts in the opium poppy economy as well as to provide specific points of contrast to the key WOL study sites.

The report is divided into four sections. The first section provides an overview of the theoretical underpinning of the analysis, offering an explanation of the diversity that exists amongst opium poppy cultivating households both in terms of the different assets they have at their disposal and the subsequent dependency they have on the cultivation of the crop as part of their overall livelihood strategy. The second section provides a detailed assessment of the coping strategies that households have adopted in response to a significant reduction in opium poppy cultivation in the province of Nangarhar between 2004 and 2005. These coping strategies are used to identify and characterise areas that contain different asset groups and their concomitant differing levels of dependency on opium poppy, as well as to discuss the likely sustainability of the current ban on opium poppy cultivation in each of these areas. The third section explores the process by which opium poppy was introduced into parts of Ghor in the late 1990s and the subsequent impact of crop failure in 2006. It highlights the marginal role opium poppy plays within livelihood strategies in Ghor, where non-farm income and livestock are typically given greater priority. The final section offers a comparative analysis of these two very distinct opium poppy growing areas.