Recommendation I: Stop aggressive poppy crop eradication in Afghanistan and avoid at all cost chemical spraying

The United States should stop pushing for aggressive, short term poppy crop eradication as long as sustainable alternatives are not yet readily available and farmers still do not have a real choice between the legal and illegal economy.

The United States should especially abandon pursuing chemical eradication of poppy crops in Afghanistan, whether from the air on through ground spraying. Chemical spraying of poppy growing areas would be disastrous for the United States’ hearts and minds mission, sacrificing the early results obtained so far in terms of local trust gained and local support won for the NATO-led ISAF mission. Instead, counter-narcotics policy should be regarded by the US as strategic security and counter-insurgency policy focusing on alternative livelihoods and general rural development to drive a wedge between impoverished farming communities and the Taliban insurgency.

Recommendation II: Implement a Poppy for Medicine Pilot Project

Similar to medicinal poppy production projects supported by the US in India and Turkey since the 1960s and 1970s, the United States should support in Afghanistan the implementation of a scientific Poppy for Medicine pilot project in one of the provinces where US troops and/or USAID-development projects are based. Since current alternative livelihood programmes have a limited scope and take too long to offer poppy farmers a sustainable and profitable alternative source of income, the United States should investigate on the ground whether the local production of an Afghan-made brand of morphine could on the short term could provide impoverished rural communities with a legitimate income within the legal economy. Through three years of extensive field research, ICOS has developed a Poppy for Medicine model for Afghanistan as a means of bringing illegal poppy cultivation under control, and building support for the international community’s counter-insurgency mission in an immediate yet sustainable manner.

Polling conducted in the US in August 2007 shows that the US public opinion overwhelmingly supports Poppy for Medicine and is opposed to chemical spraying.

Recommendation III: Invest more in alternative livelihood projects and stimulate tax credit systems to boost financial resources available for Afghanistan’s reconstruction and development process

While investigating innovative, more short-term development projects such as Poppy for Medicine, the United States should invest further in alternative livelihoods and diversification of the rural economy. Parts of the funds spent on military and security projects should be diverted incrementally towards the development of the rural economy, decreasing dependence on opium poppy cultivation and eventually taking away both the local support for the insurgency and their recruitment base. Next to the Poppy for Medicine pilot project, the United States should investigate other plant-based medicinal projects such as Artemisinin, the anti-malaria drug, which could provide enough added-value to farming communities to eventually diversify away from its current dependence on opium poppy cultivation.

Moreover, both the Afghan Government and the international community must recognize the key impact of tax policies on promoting Foreign Direct Investment and development in Afghanistan. Afghanistan’s donor governments such as the United States should enact law on tax breaks for those companies (and individuals) willing to invest in Afghanistan. The tax revenue lost as a result of the tax credit schemes would be offset by reducing direct foreign aid to Afghanistan by the same amount. Tax credits could prove a solution to the current mismanagement of aid funds, circumventing institutional weakness, ineffectiveness and inability to deliver.