Comprising three sets of actors with varying levels of influence over the actions of
Afghanistan’s rural farming communities, the
Integrated Control System has the
capacity to completely police and regulate every aspect of both individual village-based
projects and entire clusters of
Poppy for Medicine projects, and to apply
appropriate penalties if necessary.
| Village Shura: Social control |
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The
Integrated Control System leverages the unique information-gathering and
information-sharing capacities of Afghan community
shuras to provide the pivotal
levels of control for the implementation and operation of individual village-based
Poppy for Medicine projects. As the foundation of the
Integrated Control System,
shuras would both ensure the ‘buy-in’ of project participants, and manage the running
of the actual projects.
shuras retain maximum influence over socio-economic activities of Afghan villages
Shuras are community-level governance structures which strictly enforce social norms
and behaviour at all levels of social and economic interaction in rural Afghan
communities, through the principle of collective responsibility. The high level of
influence
shuras hold over the day-to-day actions of the inhabitants of their
communities can be explained through an examination of the four pyramidal
structural levels of authority within which social control is divided in rural
Afghanistan.
At the bottom of the pyramid are the extended family units known as
koronay, within which a
community’s social values are
internalised. At the mid-level of
the social control pyramid are the
small kinship group-based
kalays
(small village), which comprise
several koranay, and are governed
by small groups of family elders
known as a
jirga. At the penultimate layer of the pyramid is the larger
qaria (village), made up of several
kalays, and supervised by a
shura. The
shura coordinates and resolves issues of
importance for the entire
qaria and its individual members.
Why is the inclusion of shuras so pivotal?
As the country’s strongest economic and political units,
Afghan villages represent the necessary focal points for
grassroots counter-narcotics initiatives such as Poppy
for Medicine projects. Because most of Afghanistan’s
poppy is cultivated by rural communities, counter-narcotics
strategies must focus on empowering rural
communities to end their reliance on illegal poppy
cultivation. Deeply influential on village life, the shura
not only has the necessary geographical proximity, but
also has the legitimacy and authority to establish,
regulate and control an entire community’s committed
participation in a Poppy for Medicine project.
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Shura acts as a project community’s “guarantor”
As the primary controllers of
Poppy for Medicine projects,
shuras, and the
communities they govern, would effectively operate as each others’ co-guarantors.
Accountable to their communities,
shuras that would guarantee
Poppy for Medicine
projects bring significant benefits to the project participants and the villages. In return,
shuras would guarantee their entire community’s committed participation in a Poppy
for Medicine project. If either the
shura or a community member ‘defaulted’ on their
commitments to the project, the entire project village would lose its licence to
cultivate poppy for medicinal purposes, and thus its access to significant economic
benefits.
As institutions of justice, decision-making, and social control,
shuras can apply a
range of strong sanctions as preventative, corrective and punitive measures against
community members. While extensive sociological and criminological field research
strongly indicates that the social pressure from fellow community members and
leaders would ensure that project participants do not compromise the security and
control of a
Poppy for Medicine project, an important element in the control and
security of
Poppy for Medicine projects would be to establish at the planning phase
known measures to discourage potential improper behaviour.
Suitable to the Afghan rural community context, these measures would take the form
of strict sanctions, which would be decided upon by the village
shura and enacted by
the entire community. These may include simple fines or the loss of a position as an
active project participant, or the more severe punishment of ratal – the collective
social boycott of an individual.
Key concept in Poppy for Medicine projects: Village Control
Economic rationale: local production of medicines
In the global market for poppy-based medicines, finished medicines are significantly
more valuable than their raw poppy materials. Poppy for Medicine projects would
bring this value to Afghan villages, by exploiting Afghan villages’ existing
cooperative structures to locally produce morphine through the pooling of the
village’s resources.
Security rationale: security and control of medicine production
As well as making possible the actual production of medicines, basing Poppy for
Medicine projects in villages allows for each phase of the entire medicine production
process to be secured through the village’s governance and collective social control
systems.
Underlying sociological rationale
Through their strong social control systems based on reciprocal relationships, Afghan
villages can effectively guarantee the committed participation of Afghanistan’s
farming communities in Poppy for Medicine projects. The value brought to the village
through the local production and sale of morphine would provide villages with
sufficient incentives to do so.
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