School children in Balkh province, in the north of Afghanistan, are being used by the government’s counter-narcotics department to try and eradicate the production of poppies. Transported out into the country from the capital city Mazar-e-Sharif, sometimes just for a day, students have had sitting in class being replaced by walking through fields and bashing poppy plants with sticks.
The main reason for students being using is quite straightforward, as one senior government official in charge noted:
”Even with transportation and lunch, [school] students come a lot cheaper than any other work force. We’re going to use students several more times before the end of the poppy season.”
This blunt assessment of the program isn’t in line with the picture painted a couple of months ago by the provincial governor of Balkh, Attah Mohammad Noor, of all school children - along with government employees - coming out on a voluntary basis to rid the area of poppy fields. Equally to the point was a senior education department official for Balkh:
“We did not consult the education ministry when we decided to do this. Fighting drugs is the duty of every Afghan. But now we see that the ministry does not want students to miss even one day of classes.”
Not that all students interviewed by journalists minded. Mohammad Amin mirrored the local government’s sentiments that it was his duty as an Afghan to destroy the crops that makes his country notorious. And Noor Mohammad liked the opportunity to get away from the city of Mazar-e-Sharif for a day. But others, like 14-year-old Parwaiz, were just plain scared. Farmers and drug gangs, with the most to lose from poppy eradication, have sometimes reacted violently to their fields being tampered with.
Technorati Tags: afghanistan, drugs, war on drugs