Criticism of use of spray-planes for combating drugs in Afghanistan

The decision of the Afghan government to use spray-planes or so-called crop-dusters to destroy opium poppy fields has been described by the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) as "short-sighted action for action’s sake”. "The widespread use of pesticides will not only affect the health of many farmers and the supply of foodstuffs”, warned the GfbV Asia expert Ulrich Delius. "With each spray-flight the Afghan government will lose more credibility among the Afghan people.” Since Kabul has ordered the destruction campaign on foreign pressure the violence against foreigners – against Bundeswehr soldiers too - will also increase.

The experience from Colombia, where since the 70s spray-flights have been in operation, shows the ineffectiveness of such measures, said the GfbV. Since the year 2000 more than 2.3 thousand million dollars have been spent on spraying in the South-American country. This has not however reduced the production. If heavy spraying takes place in one region, the producers simply move to another one.

In Bolivia too experience with the forcible destruction of drug acreage has proved negative. The coca acreage was certainly in the short term reduced by massive military operations between 1997 and 2000. But in 2004 it was already bigger than before the compulsory measures. "It is only cooperation with the farmers and a comprehensive promotion of agriculture that drug cultivation can be really reduced”, said Delius.

It is not just since the increase on opium production in 2006 that Afghanistan has become a drug country. "The local governors and drug barons carry out their business in the north of the country under the eyes of the Bundeswehr and they are left in peace”, reported Delius. 40 percent of the heroin sold in Great Britain comes from the province of Helmand, which is controlled by the British. However the NATO takes no action to curb the wire-pullers and profit-makers in the drug trade, as the Executive Director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Antonio Maria Costa, has demanded. "In the light of this inaction it is particularly absurd to contaminate wide stretches of land and to punish only the poorest victims of the drug business.”