ReageraMera

Chairman, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen. May I first of all start by thanking all the organizers for putting on this first ever World Forum Against Drugs under the patronage of Her Majesty Queen Silvia.

This session is about whether Afghanistan can get rid of the opium problem and the short answer is of course "YES". But when - I do not know. What I want to share with you today is the successes we have had, and indeed some of the lessons learnt from the failures and perhaps how we, the Afghans, together with the international community can look forward as to how to solve this problem.

The main theme of this conference is ‘100 years of drug prevention'. I would like to remind this gathering that opium can be traced back as far as 3500 years B.C. so the production is in fact over five and a half thousand years old! Why has it become a problem?

In the 1500's there are records of the Emperor Babur in what is now Kabul, taking ‘maajun' - a mixture of hashish, opium and other ingredients such as honey, dates, oil and spices. For centuries the opium poppy has been cultivated in parts of Afghanistan, for medical and recreational use. Throughout the world, opium was produced and even legally traded and indeed wars were fought over it as well.

It was only in 1827 that morphine was discovered as a product from opium and between 1874 and 1890 the heroin was first discovered.

What happened in Afghanistan?

In some parts of the country, opium use has been a very old tradition, both as a medicine and to give to young children to pacify or cure them. This was often in communities that were either poor or had little or no access to medical facilities or where the women worked as well as the men. There were also instances where it was used for social recreation.

All this started to change in the very late 1970s with a mixture of difference changes around the world. In the 1970s the West ‘discovered' heroin - on a wide scale, not now as a medicine but as a ‘recreational' substance that quickly had addictive properties that affected the taker and turned into drug abuse. There was now a lucrative but illegal demand.

At the same time Afghanistan was plunged into the beginning of three decades of war. During this time of troubles, poor farmers found that they had a small living they could make, criminal gangs found a new way of making money, corruption rose, external criminal organizations found that Afghanistan was a good place to grow poppy. And there was a market in the West that was ready to buy it.

Over the next thirty years, as pressure grew in our neighbouring countries to stop opium poppy growing,  unfortunately Afghanistan increased increased its production until we have become the world´s largest supplier of opium. Not something we are proud of but behind this headline lay a number of successes.

All of these factors concentrated the increased cultivation in Afghanistan. However, the continuing expansion of narcotics industry represents the greatest threat to Afghanistan's stability, especially since the narcotics trade is strongly linked to insecurity and terrorist activities. As His Excellency President Hamid Karzai has said - "If we don't destroy poppy, poppy will destroy Afghanistan". The Taliban and the narcotics traffickers share the same objectives in maintaining a state of insecurity and undermining governance and the rule of law. In some cases they are one and the same.

In the immediate aftermath of the Taliban's fall, efforts began to deal with the threat of the ‘opium economy'. United Nations Security Council resolution 1378 of 14 November 2001 noted that the new government "should respect Afghanistan's international obligations, including cooperating fully in international efforts to combat terrorism and illicit drug trafficking". This resolution was reflected in the Bonn Agreement of 5 December 2001, which requested the interim Authority and the Loya Jirga to "cooperate with the international community in the fight against drugs and organized crime". Moreover, the conclusions of the International Conference on Reconstruction Assistance to Afghanistan, Tokyo 21 January 2002, recognized the vital importance of counter narcotics issues to the success of reconstruction. Finally, The Afghanistan Compact also recognized the importance of this fight in the implementation of Afghanistan National Development strategy.

During 2002-2008, HE President Hamid Karzai has issued a number of decrees banning cultivation, production, drug abuse, trafficking of narcotic drugs and rewarding communities who respect the central government's policies. Various Ulema councils have issued fatwas which declared poppy cultivation contrary to Islamic sharia. Similarly, the Constitution of Afghanistan ranked opium cultivation, trafficking and consumption on par with terrorist activities as threats. Article 7 of the Constitution states; "The State prevents all types of terrorist activities, cultivation and smuggling of narcotic drugs and production and consumption of intoxicants."

In 2006, 28 provinces of Afghanistan were cultivating poppy, only six out of 34 provinces remained poppy free. The government decided to focus its efforts on increasing the number of poppy free provinces with the intention to suppress poppy cultivation in the south where most of the Afghan poppy is cultivated. Now three years after, 18 provinces out of 34 are poppy free. This shows a remarkable progress. This Year we have also seen a decrease of nearly 20% in cultivation of opium poppy and 6% decrease in production.

Now, almost all of the cultivation takes place exclusively in a small number of provinces, those most affected by insurgency in the southern part of the country.

During the past three years the Afghan government with the support of the international community has been able to reduce cultivation in some of Afghanistan's traditional opium cultivating provinces. These are Nangarhar and Badakhshan.

The success lies much on traditional methods and tactics. We have been working very closely with community leaders, local shuras, religious scholars, parliamentarians and governors. Our policy has been prevention and thus we have delivered counter narcotics messages through a nationwide pre-planting campaign. The communities, local administration, mullahs, central government officials and the international community representatives have actively participated in this nationwide campaign.

Prevention compared to eradication is an effective measure. Once the farmers decide not to cultivate poppy in their fields early in the season, they have other options to cultivate but eradication would force them to hunger and poverty as we will have to wait until the next cultivation season.

All in all, good governance, rule of law, security and self restraint are the important indicators in this fight. Pre-planting campaign and public awareness are the most effective tools in preventing communities from poppy cultivation.

The history shows that the cultivation trend has been up and down in the course of the years. Now, the challenge ahead of us this year is to sustain poppy free provinces and further reduce cultivation in the coming years. We have now laid the foundation of a strategic fight against drugs in Afghanistan. The progress this year shows that the National Drugs Control Strategy that was launched during the London conference on Afghanistan in early 2006 is working.

We must ensure that provinces like Nangarhar and Badakhshan do not cultivate poppy again. Farmers and laborers are expecting assistance. This year Afghanistan faced drought and high food prices which threatens a possible relapse next season if enough support is not delivered to the target communities.

In 2007, the government, supported by the international community - in particular the US and the UK - launched a new program of rewarding communities under the name of Good Performance Initiative of GPI. This program is an effective tool to encourage communities not to grow poppy. Currently the program covers 17 provinces with a total funding of 23 million dollars. This year the funding will increase to more than 45 million dollars.

We have recently developed and presented to the international community a new provincial-based planning approach for the effective implementation of National Drugs Control strategy. This major policy shift was required because for the past 4 or 5 years both the international community and the Afghan government have been arguing on what are counter narcotics related projects and what are not. Different terminologies were used - alternative livelihoods, legal livelihoods and alternative development - with no effective results on the ground.

Thus the government decided to come up with provincial counter narcotics focused plans that will present a comprehensive approach to development assistance as well as special counter narcotics activities related to drug demand reduction, law enforcement and criminal justice.

In years ahead we will focus our activities on the following major areas:

Year round pre-planting and public awareness campaigns

Using local councils, community elders, parliament members and social gatherings

Advocating good governance by punishing corrupt officials and rewarding loyal and clean officials

Rewarding communities by funding their priority projects through the Good Performance Initiative

Increasing pressure on traffickers and drug smugglers and their supporters by interdicting their convoys, destroying heroin processing labs and opium open bazaars.

Implementation of provincial counter narcotics planning process

Treating drug addiction and raising awareness among the communities on its harms by increasing the number of treatment and counseling centers in the country

Targeted manual eradication where legal livelihoods exists.

We will need more support and backing from our international partners to sustain the progress and achieve further successes in the coming years.

At the end I would like to thank once again the organizers of this important forum and I pray for a world free of drugs and terrorism.

Thank you for your attention.