February 15, 2003	Saturday	Zul Hijjah 13, 1423

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window).

PESHAWAR, Feb 14: Poppy cultivation has shot up, down from zero, in parts of the federally administered tribal regions that border Afghanistan. Pakistani officials however blame the Afghan refugees for the “surprising” reversion to the banned crop.

Figures collected by the department of home & tribal affairs, NWFP, revealed that poppy was grown over an estimated 3,850 acres of land in parts of the tribal region.

While there are known poppy growing areas, some new areas which never grew the banned crop in the past have also begun cultivating it.

Tirah valley in the Khyber Agency that borders Afghanistan continues to be the largest poppy growing area in the entire tribal region. Political authorities do not exercise much control over the inaccessible valley, though Pakistan opened up the remote mountainous area by positioning its troops along its border with Afghanistan to check the infiltration of Al Qaeda militants into this side of the Durand Line.

Official figures suggest that poppy was grown over an estimated 2,000 acres, of which the crop was destroyed over 50 acres purely through persuasion and encouragement. There is still a standing crop spread over 1,900 acres, the statistics reveal.

Brig Mehmood Shah, the secretary home & tribal affairs told a news briefing in Peshawar on Monday that efforts were being made to persuade tribesmen to destroy the crop voluntarily but warned that force could also be used where necessary. “We will not hesitate from using force if we have to,” he said.

The report revealed that poppy was also grown in the North and South Waziristan tribal regions in areas that hitherto were not known to grow the prohibited crop. In North Waziristan, poppy was grown over an estimated 150 acres, of which the crop was eliminated from 125 acres. In Orakzai tribal agency, poppy was reported to have been grown over 692 acres, while the crop was reported to have been grown over 300 acres in the semi-autonomous and provincially-administered tribal region of Kala Dhaka in Hazara division.

The secretary home attributed this dramatic upsurge in poppy cultivation to economic factors as well as the presence of Afghan refugees. Analysts however say that refugees are not a recent phenomenon and any attempt to attribute the increase in poppy cultivation to this factor alone is too simplistic and could be misleading.

These analysts point to the fact that poppy cultivation had almost come down to zero in recent years despite the presence of over three million Afghan refugees in Pakistan. “What we are seeing here is not only that some traditional poppy growing areas have reverted to cultivating the crop again but that some new areas too have joined the bandwagon,” said one analyst. “This is disturbing.”

This new phenomenon, say these analysts, may well be the result of laxity in authorities’ approach to handle the issue more firmly like in the past as well as religious decrees issued by certain clerics in some tribal areas.

But the home secretary discarded the religious decree factor, saying it did not carry any weight. “It was issued by an individual and not by any religious institution. We are considering prosecuting the cleric who had issued the decree,” he told the news briefing.

Some analysts say poppy growers in the Pakistani tribal regions may also be influenced by the increase in poppy cultivation in Afghanistan.

According to a survey released by the US Office of National Drug Control Policy, farmers in Afghanistan cultivated approximately 30,759 hectares of poppy in 2002.

It has made Afghanistan the world’s leading exporter of heroin in the post-Taliban dispensation. During the same period in 2001 only 1,685 hectares of poppy were cultivated in the Taliban reign. The decline in poppy had been attributed to a strictly-enforced ban imposed by the Taliban.