Abstract

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.