| Counter narcotics by bridging security and development efforts |
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In Afghanistan, poppy cultivation represents an important survival strategy for
millions in Afghanistan’s rural farming communities, providing a livelihood but not
much more: the majority of Afghanistan’s poppy farmers cultivate poppy out of need,
not greed. In forcibly removing Afghan farming communities’ main cash crop, current
forced eradication-based counter-narcotics efforts are contributing to insecurity in the
country, as rural communities turn to the Taliban and insurgents to protect their cash
crops, thereby compromising the Afghan government and international community’s
efforts to secure, stabilise, and develop Afghanistan.
It is clear that economic development is the key to successfully and sustainably
stabilising Afghanistan, and extensive field research has made it equally clear that
counter-narcotics policies in Afghanistan must reflect this. The problem is that
currently, the economic development necessary to end farming communities’ reliance
on poppy cultivation is precluded by the ongoing insecurity in Afghanistan. The
village-based
Poppy for Medicine project is a counter-narcotics initiative which
allows for the circumvention of this catch-22 situation. As outlined in the
Projects’ Control System section, the
security measures embedded in the
Poppy for Medicine project model would allow for
the immediate development of the economies of rural Afghan farming communities.
The secure development generated by
Poppy for Medicine projects would in turn have
an immediate ink-blot effect on security and development, and in doing so provide a
bridge to longer term sustainable security and development.