To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to assist farmers in Afghanistan to move from opium poppy cultivation to a sustainable alternative livelihood.

I thank the Government for allowing time for me to raise this very important Question, which impacts not only on DfID but also on the Ministry of Defence, as peace in Helmand would have a profound effect on the morale of our soldiers out there. I declare an interest as patron of the mother and child clinic in the Panjshir Valley.

With the problems created in Afghanistan due to the war over the past three or four decades, there exists, especially within the UK, a keen interest to help the people of Afghanistan to better their lives and develop a strong and stable nation. One of the steps to creating economic strengths and stability within Afghanistan is through agriculture, and one of the successful substitutes for growing opium poppies is the cultivation of pomegranates.

In 2007, Afghanistan produced 95 per cent of the world’s refined opiates, with a street value of some $38 billion. On average, 90 per cent of the heroin in the UK stems from Afghanistan. The cost to the UK alone of the heroin problem is £16.4 billion per annum. Furthermore, opium cultivation now takes place almost exclusively in provinces most affected by insurgency, with Helmand being the most profitable. Therefore, a substitution would also seriously damage Taliban financing. The UNODC said:

“There is now a perfect overlap between zones of high risk and regions of high opium cultivation. Since drugs are funding insurgency, and insurgency enables drug cultivation, insurgency and narcotics must be fought together”.

The Taliban is thought to have earned as much as $100 million from this trade.

Since the Russian invasion of 1979, agriculture has received new impetus, and lately Afghanistan has become poised to become a major exporter of pomegranates, a traditional crop for centuries. Foundations such as POM354 are already in place, trying to persuade more farmers and tribal elders to make this transition from the growth of opium poppies to pomegranates and to help meet the need of farmers.

DfID recently launched its country plan for the next four years for Afghanistan. This plan sets out the framework for Britain’s aid to Afghanistan, with a pledge of more than £127 million per year between now and 2013. This is worth £30 million a year being used to help farmers move away from opium cultivation. As a result, other nations are beginning to take interest, such as the US, Canada and the Netherlands.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office acknowledges that eliminating the opium poppy without developing viable legal livelihoods is not sustainable, and it is therefore suggested that the focus should be on substitution, mainly by pomegranates. The case for replacing opium poppies is clear, but why with pomegranates? Afghanistan is known to have the best pomegranates in the world. Kandahar in the south produces perhaps the world’s best. The Afghan Government are currently implementing a $12 million US-funded initiative intended to modernise and expand the country’s pomegranate industry.

However, many farmers still need to be persuaded to make the transition from poppies to pomegranates. Fourteen of the 34 provinces are poppy-free and I hope that more will follow that trend. The key organisation doing this is POM354, which was founded in Britain by James Brett. Its concept is simple, and as a result, has led to its huge popularity within Afghanistan and the rest of the world. In a short space of time, POM354 has managed to establish substantial consensus within the Government and among farmers. In November 2008, 22,000 farmers signed up to the POM354 scheme and, as a result, in March 2009, 40,000 pomegranate trees were planted. Furthermore, as a result of aid and work by foundations such as POM354, Afghanistan as a whole saw a 6 per cent decrease in opium production between 2007 and 2009.

The goal now is for POM354 to obtain further financial support from organisations in donor countries. It is generally accepted that there is only a short window to alter Afghanistan’s agriculture in favour of pomegranates. Without outside aid, the project would not be able to become operational, as the farmers need to be sustained during the three-year period of conversion—the time between the saplings being planted and becoming fruitful. POM354’s target is over the next 10 to 15 years to develop 175,000 hectares of mature pomegranate orchards generating a substantial income. Through its various schemes, farmers will create their own infrastructure to facilitate this new agricultural development and, in the process, generate greater revenue per hectare than the poppy. Will the Government continue to support alternative viable crops? As a result, the heroin supply would drastically fall and the Afghan people would have a development programme prosperous enough to resist the Taliban and, in doing so, create worthwhile livelihoods and a greater chance of peace in the area.

I apologise for not putting my name down, but I was concerned about my possible involvement in the Coroners and Justice Bill. However, I seize the opportunity of the gap to support every word that the noble Baroness, Lady Rawlings, said. One always listens with interest and admiration to what she says.

My interest in Afghanistan was stimulated by my visit to Helmand province last year to see what was going on and to listen to what people said about what they were trying to do, very much along the lines of what the noble Baroness was talking about. I was told—I had read about this before but I had not heard it from the people—that until the time of the Russian intervention, Afghanistan was one of the major exporters around the world of dried fruit and nuts and produced the best. It was mentioned that that should be restimulated as an alternative to the heroin crop—not just pomegranates.

It is particularly sad to learn that our intervention in 2002 was very largely responsible for what has happened to that wonderful growing land in the Helmand valley. Until 2002, that valley was virtually the grain basket of Afghanistan but in 2002 the World Food Programme took in an enormous amount of grain to help feed the people in Afghanistan, so much so that they destroyed the market for the Helmand farmers. Being unable to sell their crops, the farmers took to poppies instead, stimulated, of course, by the Taliban. I discovered what we were trying to do about it: the Royal Air Force had flown in a very large number of sacks of seedcorn which were being held in depots so that, at the end of the poppy crop, the farmers could be given seeds and encouraged to grow something else.

Of course, growing wheat is not what it is all about as much as selling it. Therefore, in taking over the villages and towns of the Helmand province, the military were trying to open markets to which the farmers could take their wheat and sell it. Unfortunately, the Taliban realised that, so they tried, first, to undermine the whole market structure. Secondly, knowing that farmers have to get their wheat along the roads, the Taliban and others have been mounting roadblocks through which the farmers have to pass and in which they are relieved of money, which undermines their wish to go to market. In addition, of course, by having to keep those roads open, the military lay themselves open to all the mines and other devices planted beside the roads which cause so many casualties. So the process, admirable though it is, is not at present organised well enough to be able to achieve the end for the farmers, which is to help them to break away, and it is causing great problems for the military.

What do we do about it? I had a long talk with the commander of the Afghan National Army in Helmand and asked him what he felt was most needed. He said, “Two things: first, you have to stop the bombing”, but that is nothing to do with this particular subject, “and, secondly, water”. He said that if you look at the geography, not just at the Helmand valley but at adjacent valleys and other valleys in similar places, you will see it is possible, through civil engineering, to introduce water into the valleys which would encourage the growing of the sort of alternative crops mentioned by the noble Baroness. Therefore, if the world community really wants to help Afghanistan, it has to enable the crops to be grown in the areas where they might be grown, and so encourage the whole process to start.

I think that we could do more. I used to talk about dried fruit and nuts until listening to the noble Baroness speak about pomegranates, but I have often wondered whether the supermarkets of the world might not be encouraged to get together to buy the crop from the farmers in advance to give them some economic wherewithal to survive until the crop is sold, thereby contributing to what they would gain. In this whole area to which the noble Baroness has drawn attention, there are openings in which the world can contribute very considerably to the development of Afghanistan and particularly to the development of those whose lives are made such a misery by the activities of the Taliban at present.

Before I come to the subject of this afternoon’s debate, I extend our sincere condolences to the family of Major Sean Birchall, who was killed in Helmand last Friday, the third Welsh Guardsman to be killed in action, and our profound gratitude to all the soldiers of my regiment and other servicemen who are risking their lives in a cause that is absolutely vital to the whole world—the maintenance and strengthening of a free and democratic Afghanistan. It is essential that we support them with the military resources that they need to defend themselves and the civilian population against the Taliban and, in particular, to deal with IEDs, the favourite weapon of the terrorists. Do we have access to the counter-IED technologies, on which the Americans are reported to be spending $4 billion a year?

I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Rawlings, on securing this debate and having dealt so effectively with the question of crop substitution. As she says, poppy cultivation reached an enormous peak of 8,200 tonnes in 2007, and the area under cultivation was also a record at 193,000 hectares in that year. But there are now hopeful signs. There was a reduction in 2008, and the business is concentrated in the seven provinces of the south and south-west, where the terrorists are still influential. The Secretary-General's special representative says that a further improvement is likely in 2009. With the extra 20,000 NATO troops, and the Afghan army also increasing in numbers and efficiency, there ought to be positive feedback, as the terrorists find it harder to coerce farmers into growing poppy, and to raise the taxes on their production, which is their main source of revenue. Crop substitution would make an enormous impact on the finance of terrorism, whether in the form of pomegranates, fruit and nuts or what seems to be the main alternative—wheat.

At the same time, the relative economics of growing poppy and those other crops have changed. The EU special representative's April counternarcotics update quoted a local estimate from Helmand that wheat is now about 8 per cent more profitable than opium, and the report suggests that there may be a window of opportunity for alternative crop development, as the noble Baroness said. In 2008, DfID and USAID jointly issued free wheat seed to 32,000 farmers in Helmand, and it would be useful to know what the plan is for this year. We are also reviewing, with the Afghan Government, a new four-year programme to succeed the Helmand agriculture and rural development programme, to which DfID contributed £30 million over 2006-09 for infrastructure, including roads, wells—I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, that water is of vital importance in this climate—and an agriculture high school. How far has the review of the programme progressed, and do we believe that it will achieve a permanent and sustained transfer from poppy to wheat cultivation in Helmand?

The same report contrasted the huge success of governor-led eradication programmes in Helmand, which it says dwarfed those in all other provinces and were the highest ever recorded for GLE in 2008. This governor, as the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, will confirm, is exceptional in Helmand, in terms of both his abilities and his incorruptibility. Does the Minister think that perhaps that is not the case with other governors of provinces where narcotics are grown or trafficked, and that some may either have active interests in the local narcotics industry or are not strong enough to challenge the authority of local narcotics traffickers? If so, do we have to acquiesce in the situation, or could there be a strategy for their replacement?

Richard Holbrooke, the US special envoy, has slated US eradication efforts as “wasteful and inefficient”. If eradication is to continue, should it not be concentrated on the GLE rather than the poppy eradication force activities, which are costing more than a hundred times as much per hectare as the GLE and achieving less? Do the Government have a view on whether eradication should be done at all? If so, how should it be incorporated into development at provincial and district level, and who should do it?

Do we also agree with Mr Holbrooke's call for,

“a very significantly expanded agricultural sector job-creation set of programmes involving irrigation, farmer-to-market roads, market places and seed”?

This seems to be the pattern in Helmand, where a month ago Mr Ian Purves, the UK's development co-ordinator in Garmsir, was showing journalists round the new bazaar, new tarmac roads, solar-powered streetlights and the refurbished school and health centre. The local farmers in and around the town are now growing wheat from seed distributed in 2007 instead of poppies. The Commander of the UK Task Force Helmand told the journalists that the local government and people had grasped the opportunity of better security to improve their living conditions, and the same could happen throughout the south as the Taliban is defeated.

For the time being, according to DfID, Helmand still accounts for more than 50 per cent of the country's opium poppy cultivation in 2007-08 and was also the most important province in terms of heroin processing and trafficking. But provinces in the peaceful north, such as Badakhshan, now virtually poppy-free, also need help. Of the $32 billion spent by international donors in Afghanistan, only $8 billion has been channelled through the Government, and in Badakhshan the farmers say that they have had no help from either the Government or the aid agencies. UNAMA, the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, is supposed to co-ordinate the aid programmes, but with those vast sums, a third of the population is still chronically food insecure. What is the Government's view on the transparency and accountability of these programmes, and can the Minister say whether any of the missing $24 billion not spent through the Government has been allocated to the promotion of alternative crops? Why is that not among the six core areas of UNODC's strategy?

The DfID evaluation report published last month said that counternarcotics efforts are a combination of economic development, provision of social services, and better governance and the rule of law. It said that programmes such as the Afghanistan alternative livelihoods project and research in alternative livelihoods fund have made valuable contributions to producing alternatives to poppy. There is considerable effort to secure Afghan ownership of the programmes. We fund most of our alternative livelihood programmes through the Afghan Government and their agencies, and that must be the right approach in the long term. But the narcotics mafia has infected the Government themselves, with senior figures either using government institutions to run the business, or protecting the major narcotics traffickers. These traitors to Afghanistan would take ownership of counternarcotics efforts only in order to subvert them, as has happened, to some extent, with eradication. The quarterly report from NATO puts this in more diplomatic language when it says:

“Most of the ministries remain ineffective, under-resourced and lacking in skilled or experienced personnel, and this lack of institutional capacity makes it difficult for ministries to administer and disburse funds”.

Are we using financial, developmental and military forces effectively to drive forward Afghan-led reform to clean up the Administration, and can these efforts succeed when President Karzai himself tolerates drug collusion by senior officials and even Ministers?

The management response to the DfID evaluation says that both on the Afghan side and in DfID, the context has changed since the evaluation, and on poppy cultivation, a new initiative to sustain reductions is being developed by the Afghan Government with DfID's support, taking into account the lessons learnt from both successful and unsuccessful efforts to date. Could the Minister say how is this work progressing and, in particular, how the weak co-ordination among donors and the ineffectiveness of UNAMA and other UN agencies are being tackled? Can the knowledge and experience of counternarcotics that we have acquired be transferred to other donors, particularly to our 18 EU partners who are involved?

Finally, does the Minister consider that PRTs have a useful role to play in counternarcotics strategy, bearing in mind their lack of an explicit mandate and, if any of them have done effective work, could that be continued by other agencies?

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for raising this important subject. I would have been even more grateful had it been standing room only at the back and had a lot more noble Lords been interested in the subject—it may be due not to a lack of interest but to other attractions. However, in the contributions that we have heard we have had quality even if we have not had quantity. I shall seek to answer the many questions that were asked, but perhaps I may start by putting the issue into context.

It is one of those debates where there are no two sides; we have had a series of points, questions, criticisms—justifiable in many cases—and an understanding that we have to do more to alleviate the tragedy that is Afghanistan. While there is much to do, we have some successes to point to.

As we all know, Afghanistan remains one of the world’s poorest countries. We know that the UK’s own security is threatened by continued instability in the Afghanistan and Pakistan region. We are committed to helping the Government of Afghanistan secure the future of their country and forge a better life for all Afghan people.

Three years ago, the UK and Afghanistan signed a 10-year development partnership agreement. This April, the Secretary of State for International Development launched a new DfID country plan for Afghanistan, worth £510 million in aid over the next four years. That firmly underlines our commitment, and makes Afghanistan our fifth largest development programme world wide. Our efforts, civilian and military, are contributing at national and local levels towards helping Afghans overcome the insurgency and secure, govern and develop the country for themselves—a point that was made in the debate.

It is worth looking back over the past seven years to some of the progress that has been made. This year, Afghanistan will hold its second set of democratic presidential elections. In the previous election, six out of 10 Afghans exercised their democratic rights by voting for the first time in more than 35 years—a figure that should make us slightly ashamed of our own voting performance in elections held recently. Five million refugees have been able to return home. And where just one in 10 Afghans lived in districts with access to basic healthcare, that figure is now up to eight in 10.

Of course, very serious challenges remain across Afghanistan. In the past year, many Afghans have become more pessimistic about their personal safety and their country’s prospects for moving forward. Afghanistan is facing simultaneously four scourges that would individually trouble any country in the world: weak governance, poverty, insurgency and narcotics. It is the last of those challenges and how we find alternative ways forward which are at the centre of today’s debate.

The noble Baroness spoke of alternative agricultural products to replace the farmers’ requirement to grow poppies. She made reference to Helmand province in particular, where the suggested alternative to poppy-growing is pomegranates through the project, POM354. DfID is supportive of the aims of POM354. Discussions have taken place with Mr Brett, who is no relation of mine—I say that to protect his reputation, not mine—and officials have offered technical assistance and advice. Our development programme works to create the economic conditions for organisations such as POM354 to succeed, but we do not fund individual initiatives. Our recommendation to POM354 and its initiative is to produce a detailed business plan which will help to maximise the programme’s chances of success and help conversations with donors. DfID will continue to provide advice on such a plan. We have also had reference to the wheat-growing initiative, which I will come to in the latter part of my contribution.

The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, raises an important point about the infrastructure requirement to allow markets to work and the growers of products to have access without intimidation. DfID is supporting infrastructure in Helmand with £32 million over the next four years aimed at irrigation, the Lashkar Gah to Gereshk road—which addresses the question about access to markets—the Gereshk hydro-power plant, which will help to boost the economy and the opening of airfields for the first commercial flights at Bost on 3 June, together with £4.5 million for an agricultural centre to improve access to markets.

We are also aware of the need to improve the economic and commercial background to the country. DfID is supporting the Afghanistan investment climate facility with £30 million to improve the regulatory environment in which to start businesses, removing some of those bureaucratic and difficult obstacles that prevent small businesses of any kind getting to the point at which they are sustainable.

The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, raised a series of points that are all worthy of comment. He made a point which I echo, and to which the Government have already committed, which is of course our condolences on the death of Major Sean Birchall. It is a sad fact of life that our brave soldiers give service. That inevitably has its cost, which is a terrible burden for their families. Whenever we hear of the death of service personnel, support staff or the innocents involved, we can only send out our hearts to those who have lost a loved one.

The noble Lord raised counter-IED technologies, on which the Americans, as he pointed out, are reported to be spending $4 billion. He gave me advance notice of the question, so I was able to seek reference to the ministerial Statement to the House of Commons made by the then Secretary of Defence, John Hutton, on 29 April. He made the point that units will provide important additional capabilities for UK forces in Afghanistan, and said:

“We shall also enhance our capability to counter Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs). These devices are a major threat to our troops, those of our allies and to the ordinary Afghan people. We are deploying personnel with a range of skills to detect, dispose and exploit IEDs and to prevent them being laid. Other personnel will improve our ability to defend our bases while we shall also reinforce our already significant reconnaissance capabilities. We shall increase the number of tactical unmanned aerial vehicles. We shall also deploy Sea King air surveillance and control helicopters and the new airborne stand-off radar. These complementary systems track use radar to track movements on the ground. They can help our forces to detect, follow and intercept insurgents before they can lay IEDs”.—[Official Report, Commons, 29/4/09; col. 46WS.]

The noble Lord also referred to the extra 20,000 troops and sought positive feedback. We hope to see security gradually improving with the additional 20,000 NATO troops, and increasing numbers and efficiency in the Afghan National Army. Security is an important aspect of our long-term development efforts. It will allow for better access to markets and, in turn, offer farmers an alternative to poppy growing. Poppies are collected at the farm gate, while farmers take other crops to market—a point ably made by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. NATO rules allow ISAF partners specifically to target individuals with narcotics interests.

The noble Lord also raised development to replace the HARDP programme, how it has progressed and whether we can achieve a permanent and sustained transfer from poppy to wheat cultivation in Helmand. DfID has agreed in principle to fund the Helmand alternative livelihoods programme, the first stage of which will be operational by September. The aim of the programme is to reduce poppy cultivation, but its success will depend on the overall security situation and the development of market prices for poppy and agricultural produce.

The noble Lord also raised the comparative lack of success of the GLE in other provinces compared with Helmand. He rightly made comments about the energy and efficiency of a particular governor and whether other governors were being encouraged or, indeed, removed if they do not achieve the same endeavours. At the moment, I prefer to take some comfort from the successes, but we need to seek to sustain and to improve the capabilities of the Government of Afghanistan in all the areas where we can clearly see weaknesses that need to be reduced.

On illicit livelihoods, we have previously had a debate about whether poppy cultivation could be changed from illicit to licit, which, on that occasion, was not seen as an answer to the problem. Equally, eradication on its own will not solve the problem. It is an important deterrent and can play a catalytic role in influencing farmers to give up poppy cultivation. It needs to be balanced with measures to interdict drugs, bring criminals to justice, build institutions and encourage development of rural communities to provide alternatives for poppy farmers. It is essential to insert a credible risk to poppy growing and to target the big traders who will benefit most from the narcotics trade. We also need to ensure that we do not measure success merely based on the area where the poppy has been eradicated. The important factor is that the contribution of the poppy trade to the economy is falling, which is something from which we should take some comfort.

We also have an answer to Mr Holbrooke’s call for a very significantly expanded agricultural sector job-creation set of programmes, which is a very firm yes. That is why DFID’s programmes focus on economic development and the agricultural sector, two key development priorities of the Afghan Government, as outlined in the Afghanistan National Development Strategy. We are also supporting several major infrastructure programmes in Helmand province to improve access to markets. That includes rebuilding the Lashkar Gah to Gereshk road, the refurbishment of the power plant and the recent resurfacing of Bost airfield.

On the Government’s view of the transparency and accountability of the £32 million spent on aid, we are working hard to ensure that international aid to Afghanistan is more transparent and that the donor community holds the Afghan Government to account. We want to see other donors increase the proportion of aid which they spend directly through the Afghan Government’s systems and we are committed to spend at least 50 per cent of our aid through the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund, which is managed by the World Bank and independently monitored. The ARTF reimburses the Afghan Government on proof of legitimate expenditure. A significant proportion of international aid is spent through NGOs which promote alternative crops, but we are unable to provide a precise figure for that. The promotion of alternative crops is a key priority under the Afghan national drug control strategy, which informs the UNODC’s programmes.

On central government, under the new country plan, DfID has placed renewed emphasis on supporting the Afghan Government in building credible state institutions. We are supporting the High Office of Oversight which is the Afghan body tasked with the implementation of the Government’s anti-corruption strategy. We are also helping the Afghan Government to strengthen the rule of law and we are supporting a number of NGO-led programmes to improve transparency and accountability. However, it is for the Afghans to elect their Government and to hold their Government to account.

On the management response to DfID’s evaluation, which was raised by the noble Lord, DfID has committed £30 million over four years to the comprehensive agriculture and rural development facility—CARDF—to boost the agricultural sector and job creation in Afghanistan. We have focused on three pilot areas, including Nangahar, and we are working closely with the UNAMA agricultural task force and with the Afghan Ministry of Agriculture—MAIL—and Minister Rahimi to support MAIL’s reform programme. We are also in contact with the deputy special representative for UNAMA, Mark Ward, who is responsible for donor co-ordination.

The question was also raised about the knowledge and experience of counternarcotics that we have acquired. I was asked whether we could transfer it to other donors, particularly our partners in the EU. The answer, again, is yes. Several EU partners are now interested in joining and supporting the CARDF programme, which is to be welcomed.

The last point was on the PRTs and the roles that they have to play in CN strategy, bearing in mind their lack of an explicit mandate. The UK-led PRT in Helmand is an integral part of the development effort in Afghanistan; DfID works through and with the PRT to plan stabilisation and long-term development in Helmand province. The PRT works with the Afghan Government, line ministries and bilateral donors, and we understand that other PRTs do the same.

There is no silver bullet to address the scourge of narcotics in Afghanistan, and I suspect that there is no particular silver bullet to provide one alternative solution, be it pomegranates, wheat or whatever. We have had success in the distribution of wheat; unfortunately, the production of wheat is dependent on price in the market and on having a successful harvest, which is something that farmers have had to be concerned about for centuries. That has proved in the past year or two to be very favourable in respect of Afghanistan; we cannot guarantee that we will have such success in climatic conditions in future.

Our approach is to deliver real success. The Afghan Government’s existing programmes have contributed to the completion of some 28,000 community-led development projects, from agriculture, irrigation, and power and water supply, with another 50,000 on the way. The Government have distributed with our support some £500 million in small loans to 440,000 farmers, families and shopkeepers to help to invest in new ways to feed their families. In Helmand, where the US funded the governor’s food zone programme, to which I referred when talking about wheat production, wheat seed was distributed to 32,000 farmers as an alternative to growing poppy. While it is too early to make a long-term judgment, it has proved to be a success in the early stages. As a result, we have seen the decrease of poppy production by some 19 per cent across the country. Only two years ago, six provinces could claim to be free of poppy; today it is 18—just over half of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan. However, we recognise that progress is fragile. The risk of reversal is a high one; although higher wheat prices, lower poppy prices and the climate have worked in our favour, we cannot guarantee such factors.

We can guarantee that our commitment to Afghanistan is long term, as is our commitment to democracy and the freedom of its people. Our commitment to assisting the democratically elected Government and their agencies to bring a better life for Afghanistan’s people is also long term, and I hope that this debate will stimulate thought and encourage others to continue to support the efforts that we make. I am very grateful to the noble Baroness for bringing this debate to our Table and to noble Lords who have contributed. I hope that I have answered their questions in my responses as well as joining in with the chorus of support for what we are doing and encouragement to do more.