An Afghan Success Story

Every week I or the other IA submit a report about the CNAT team's activities.  We lead the report with our observations for the preceeding week.  Our Kabul office compiles all seven reports, edits them, and sends them out to a distribution list of interested parties.  This week (tomorrow) I intend to submit the piece below.  Editorial type observations are not favored -- it may or may not make it into the final report.  It is, however, a story that deserves telling.
BALKH IA OBSERVATIONS

      This week I we IA’s have been encouraged to write about accomplishments. I am, therefore, going to write about a genuinely amazing counter narcotics accomplishment and how it came to be. It is an accomplishment that I am proud to have been associated with in a small way, though it had been virtually completed by the time I became aware of it. It is something that happened almost overnight and that now goes almost unnoticed. It has been recorded in this space nearly every week for thirty months or so, but it seems to receive little analytical attention from those who examine this report. It is something that everyone in our counter narcotics business wishes to emulate but which very few have studied in detail. You well recognize it when you see it. It is:
                                            The Balkh Province is poppy free.
     As I stated, you have read that message countless times in this space. I want to now tell you how it came about and how it continues.
     Back in the agricultural year of 2005 - 2006, Balkh Province was number three in Afghanistan in the amount of land devoted to the cultivation of poppies – the production of opium – the contribution to the world heroine supply. One year later fewer fields were planted with poppies and almost all that were so planted were eradicated. A year after that, there were virtually no fields devoted to poppy production. Balk was truly poppy free and almost all the residents of Balkh were happy about that fact – and have remained so until this day. Though it happened quickly, this remarkable achievement was not a fluke. It happened by design. It was planned, organized, executed, reviewed, and managed. The major individual details are simple, though their execution and coordination are not simple at all. Here is an overview:
     1. The Governor takes the lead. The Governor, Atta Mohammed Noor, was appointed to his position in 2004. He is a former high school teacher, Mujahadeen fighter, and General officer. About two years after he became Governor, he decided he wanted Balkh to be free of poppies. Without this decision, it would not have happened. There may be ways to accomplish a poppy free province without the active support of the Governor, but most people doubt it. This Governor had already been here for two years. He was here during the time that Balkh Province was number three in poppy production. There is little indication that he ever actively promoted poppy cultivation, but he was certainly aware of it, and he noted both the revenue it brought the province and the problems it produced. No one, as far as I know, is sure precisely what motivated him to change his perspective. There, likely, was no single thing. He weighed the provincial revenue and the difficulties of interrupting this revenue against all the harms that narcotics and the attendant criminal complex produce, and he came down solidly on the side of the law. It is likely that the Poppy Elimination Program (PEP, the predecessor of CNAT), played a roll in the Governor’s shift, as they had actively been bringing him (and others) a counter narcotics (CN) message for a while. Other CN organizations were doing the same. In the midst of these CN programs, various aid organizations were promising aid systems to ameliorate the economic hardships of interrupting the opium revenue and helping move to alternative likelihoods. Whatever the precise components of the Governor’s decision to lead the province to a poppy free state were, all now agree that he, and his cadre of loyal aids, were the single most important component of the accomplishment. His leadership was also the most important factor in establishing the other essential elements discussed below.
     2. The political culture changes. The Governor launched a program of education, persuasion, and political inspiration to bring the District Governors, political leaders, religious leaders, education leaders, and influential citizens to his way of thinking. He hosted numerous meeting with all these groups at which he hammered home his counter narcotics message. He spurred the counter narcotics activities of PEP and the other CN organizations and helped them get the message out. He made sure that all these leaders and organizations were well versed in both the practical harms and the religious wrongs of tolerating the production of drugs. The leaders began to become actively involved. Every leader at every meeting was both receiving and transmitting counter narcotics information. Everyone began embracing the CN and rule of law philosophy. This philosophy included the public promise of plant eradication for those fields found to be engaged in poppy cultivation. They promised eradication and they left no doubt that they meant it.
     3. The societal culture changes. Hard on the heels of the deliberate education of the leadership came the deliberate education of the citizenry. PEP (now, CNAT), and similar organizations, were communicating their subject matter at every meeting and at every gathering of every type all over the province. One of the most successful elements of the campaign was the support provided to and through the schools. Counter narcotics messages were communicated at school leadership meetings, then at the schools themselves. Finally, the students themselves were taking the message to their homes and were participating in counter narcotics events. Students all over the province were holding counter narcotics rallies and even taking the long eradication sticks in hand and whacking the poppies out in the field. Pictures of students and pictures of the Governor whacking the heads off the poppy plants helped produce a spirit of anti-poppy righteousness. Most of the poppy fields that season were, in fact, eradicated, and much, maybe most, of that eradication was done by students and other volunteers. Even some of the poppy growers, realizing the evil they were perpetrating, grabbed sticks and walloped the life from their own plants. Eradication was done, when possible, early in the season so that the farmer might have a chance of successfully growing a substitute crop, but there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that, where poppies were discovered, they would be eradicated. In just a few months, the provincial attitude about poppy growth shifted 180 degrees. Those who had participated in the poppy industry were now openly ashamed and those who had tolerated it were now in active opposition. The PEP team was helping locate the fields to be eradicated, helping in discovering alternative likelihoods (AL) and putting them in place, and continuing to put out the CN message.
    4. Maintaining the accomplishment. As Balkh became poppy free for the first time, PEP became the Counter Narcotics Advisory Team (CNAT). Along with other CN organizations, CNAT then continued to do the things that had helped move the culture to this level. From the time that the 2006 -2007 anti poppy campaign began until May, 2010, PEP/CNAT has conducted over 2,000 CN projects as well as participating in a countless number of CN related activities. The CNAT Monitoring and Verification Officers monitor the countryside and law enforcement information so as to detect any poppy activity. The Alternative Livelihood Officers try to move ahead with providing more and better alternative livelihoods to those who have forgone their old ways. Meanwhile, the CNAT Public Information Officer continues to bring the CN message to as many people as possible in as many ways as prove to be effective. The Gender Affairs officer takes the CN message to the women of Balkh province and helps them participate in alternative likelihoods. By the way, I am told that, as a result of another of the Governor’s initiatives, Balkh is the only province where women are permitted to own retail businesses. Everyone pays close attention to the strategic leadership of the Governor to assure their messages and activities are in accord with his objectives and that they are not duplicative. Balkh remains poppy free and everyone in Balkh is happy about it. So far, so good.
     That is a rough synopsis of how this marvelous achievement occurred and how it continues. It truly is a momentous accomplishment. There are 34 provinces in Afghanistan and only three are poppy free. The lessons of the Balkh experience are not being successfully employed elsewhere. Of the three, provinces that are poppy free, Balkh was the first and it is the most solidly 100% in that status, as well as the most prideful about it. The only cloud on the horizon in Balkh, that I am aware of, is the one I reported about last week: The growing perception that the aid that was promised for becoming poppy free has not been forthcoming. The Governor frequently mentions his disappointment about that situation, and it is certain that no one’s opinion matters more here than the Governor’s. The other CN cloud in the Afghan sky is the absence of this level of CN progress elsewhere in the country.
     5. Recomendations.  I’ll conclude with two recommendations: 1. Study what happened here in Balkh province in much more detail than I have provided here – so as to replicate it elsewhere; and 2. Try to ameliorate the Balkh Governor’s unfortunate perception about the aid providers.

Note: An adequate level of security in Balkh Province is considered by most to have been a prerequisite to the achievement described above.