Farmers Killed

Growing the opium poppy is not always a safe job even in countries such as Afghanistan, at one point the government in power at the time decided farmers could no longer grow the Papaver somnife. Upon this decision the farmers decided to protest, over the governments campaign to burn their crops. This protest began in the Kajaki district which is in the south western province of Helmand and where the largest area of poppy crops are located.

During this protest the farmers were fired on by Afghan security men ordered by Taleban government, this resulted in 8 farmers being killed and 35 being wounded, twelve were in critical condition.

The Taleban did destroy most of the crops, however the farmers even under the threat of losing their land replanted the opium poppy crops.

When the interim government came into power, rather than threaten the farmers with violence they offered farmers $250 dollars an acre to burn their poppy crops. Much of this money had been donated by the European Union in order to stop the flow of opium products such as heroin into their countries.

This did little to persuade the poppy farmers due to the fact that they are able to make as much as $3,500 from an acre of Papaver somnife and are even able to borrow the money needed for seeds from drug smugglers.

The new government in response has said they will confiscate the farmer’s land that are caught planting the opium poppies. This is in order to stop the drug supply at the source, because if the crops are not destroyed refining in the fields will supply approximately 90 percent of the heroin in the UK and approximately 70 percent of the world supply of heroin.

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