DPA

Kabul

Rahmatullah, 19, is from Sangin, one of the most violent districts in Afghanistan.

Last month he worked in an opium farm as a daily wage labourer for three weeks. He earned Pakistani Rs4,000 ($40).

Since June his district in the volatile southern province of Helmand has seen a series of Taliban onslaughts, including attacks by hundreds of fighters taking over police checkpoints and main roads.

The province is the top poppy producer in the country, accounting for 46% of national cultivation. The amount of poppy grown is highest in northern areas, where violence has also increased.

The Afghan government has no control in the area where he works, says Rahmatullah, who now lives with his family in a displaced persons camp in the outskirts of Kabul.

“I went there for short-term employment during the planting. I worked in a field owned by a landlord,” he said. “We stayed in the poppy field day and night because there was constant work.”

He and two of his friends from the camp worked in the poppy fields from before the sunrise to late afternoon.

He said he will do it again next year.

Each year, thousands of labourers work in farms across the country during poppy cultivation and harvest time to earn extra money.

Officials estimate the industry indirectly employs around half a million Afghans, more than the total number of people in the security forces.

Billions of dollars spent in last 13 years for counter-narcotics efforts have yielded few results in Afghanistan.

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said in a report this week that the area under opium poppy cultivation rose by 7% this year to 224,000 hectares of land, higher than the previous peak of 209,000 hectares in 2013.

In 2002, a year after the Taliban regime was toppled in a US-led invasion, 74,000 hectares was being used to grow poppies.

Afghanistan now supplies 90% of the global opiates market, which includes heroin.

“We failed on counter-narcotics,” said Jean-Luc Lemahieu, the head of analysis and policy at UNODC. “If one element was missing over the past decade, it was perhaps political will.”

Officials blame growing insecurity, political instability, and botched counter-narcotics efforts of the past for the increase.

Juma Gul, 38, also from Sangin, left his village two years ago after refusing the Taliban’s request that he join insurgent fighters.

Previously he worked for a local strongman who owned a vast poppy farm and paid him and three other farmers in raw opium.

The last harvest he worked there, he sold his 4.5kg share for $300.

“In my area, the opium business still continues, but now under the Taliban protection. Only those people who support the Taliban can continue to live there, not us,” Gul said.

The problem is systemic across the country.

A lawmaker from a north-eastern province said opium farming grew in her areas because the government was unwilling to take up arms against senior officials involved in the trade.

“The problem is that we are not targetting the fundamental issue, the mafia network of the drug-industrial complex,” said parliamentarian Nilofar Ibrahimi.

This year poppy cultivation in her province Badakshan increased by 77%, and eradication decreased by 50%.

“Until three years ago Badakshan was a safe, opium-free province. Now it’s insecure, as well as a poppy-affected province.”

“Farmers and traffickers are not the problems. It is the institutions and networks that are behind them,” she said.

There have been very few high-profile arrests in the past 13 years. One example officials give is of Haji Lal Jan, an alleged drug kingpin, who received a 15-year prison sentence.

He was accused of financing the Taliban with his drugs money.

This year his case was unexpectedly sent back to a court in Kandahar, where three provincial judges signed his release.

Officials say 10% of opium revenues go to the Taliban.

But they say the increase in opium cultivation and decrease in eradication this year is partly due the presidential elections.

“With the presidential election going on, there was a huge demand for funding and that funding is not available in the legal economy. That money has to come from somewhere,” said Lemahieu.

Kabul officials agree that the elections affected the eradication programme, but say this was due to competing demands on security personnel, not to divert the drugs money.

“The government had planned to destroy at least 21,000 hectares of poppy-cultivated areas this year, with the help of the police and the army,” Counter Narcotics Minister Mobarez Rashidi said. Only 2,700 hectares was eradicated.

“There were no security forces available for us and the success of the election process was more important,” Rashidi said.

Officials say the opium economy contributes up to around 20% of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product.

Neither has international money helped combat the spread of poppy farming.

The US has spent more than $7bn on counter-narcotics efforts in the past 13 years.