Sgt. Maj. James Schulte and Capt. Doug Dunlap of the Missouri National Guard visited the Nangarhar Province in Afghanistan to help plan the pilot agricultural partnership program. (Photo courtesy of the Missouri National Guard)

Cont.

Alternative crop programs aren’t new to Afghanistan. The first was the Helmand Valley Project of the 1940s and 1950s. The program was making a little headway, Wallace said, but this was before the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, even before the Soviets invaded in 1979 and the United States aided the mujahedeen.

Efforts to make agriculture more efficient and profitable fizzled as Afghanistan entered a series of civil wars, effectively destroying any improvements in agriculture.

In addition, the conflicts have disrupted the passing of agricultural skills from father to son, said Maj. Gen. King Sidwell, adjutant general of the Missouri National Guard.

“Afghanistan has always been famous for fruits and nuts, but to grow fruits and nuts you really need a degree of security, because the trees need several years to bear fruit or nuts,” Wallace said.

“The National Guard can provide stability,” Wallace said. “If they have the skills, they could help the farmer who has to go through the learning period again.”

In a speech delivered at a U.N. press event in Brussels nearly a year ago, Thomas Schweich, U.S. deputy assistant secretary for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs, highlighted the challenge of successfully implementing alternative crop programs in Afghanistan.

“Over 50 percent of the cultivation in 2005 ... occurred in areas where there is development and where there are alternatives available,” Schweich said. “The farmers in these areas plant (poppies) because they can make more money growing poppy than they can by growing any of the many alternative crops available to them.”

Last year, Afghan farmers growing poppy earned an average of $2,747; farmers growing legal crops earned $1,754, according to U.N. research.

Poppy production is closely tied to terrorism, Wallace said, insofar as the Taliban garners its funding from the poppy crop now that it no longer controls Afghanistan’s government.

“When the Taliban was in power in Afghanistan they forbid the sale of opium,” Wallace said. “We were working with the Taliban at that point in terms of curtailing production. Now the Taliban is out of power in Afghanistan. They’re encouraging the growing of poppies in the areas they essentially control in southeast Afghanistan.”

While Schweich warned that alternative crop development is no end-all-be-all, eradication attempts seem to merely strengthen the Taliban’s pull with the population, and poppy production continues to grow by leaps and bounds in provinces with the biggest eradication efforts.

“They’re encouraging the growing of poppies while we, the U.S. and the Afghan government, (are) involved in eradication programs,” Wallace said. “Since the Afghan farmers have no real alternatives, it is making the government unpopular in those areas and making the Taliban popular, so the poppy crop is really important for all concerned.”

While Afghan farmers have been growing poppy plants for a long time, they didn’t corner the world market until after the fall of the Taliban. Afghanistan produced only about 5 percent of the world’s opium poppies in 2001 under Taliban rule, but according to the U.N., poppy production increased 825 percent the next year and has skyrocketed each year since. Afghanistan currently produces 82 percent of the world’s opium poppies, according to the U.N., cultivated from more land than is used to produce coca in all of Latin America.

“There were a series of conferences in terms of countries pledging economic aid, alleviating poverty and developing alternatives in Afghanistan,” Wallace said. “But then we went into Iraq, and Afghanistan got neglected, and that’s allowed the Taliban to come back. In other words, we didn’t finish the job in Afghanistan, and now we’re paying for it.”

There’s a lot riding on the success of Dunlap’s team. He expects to stay in the valley region for about a year, and, hopefully, other states’ Guard members will attempt the same thing in other Afghan provinces.

“It’s not going to be a one-shot deal,” Sidwell said. “In order to win over their confidence, it helps not only in economic development, but it also helps in the long-term relationships between the U.S. and Afghanistan.”

Sidwell said the idea for the project was born from conversations between then-Secretary of the Army Francis Harvey and Lt. Gen. Clyde A. Vaughn, a Missouri native and director of the Army National Guard, about how to involve the National Guard in development.

The force of 50 guardsmen going to Afghanistan in February is small in comparison with the larger force of about 11,000 Missouri Army National Guard and Missouri Air National Guard members, Sidwell said. The Missouri Army National Guard got a boost this month with the announcement of nearly 900 positions created in two new battalions.

Sidwell said he expected only about 2,000 members to be deployed overall next year.

“It leaves us well-prepared,” Sidwell said.

Likewise, Linit expects the partnership to cost MU little.

“I think our investment in this will basically be the time of the individuals who are asked to participate, but I think that will be a modest investment,” Linit said.

State Rep. Steve Hobbs, R-Mexico, sat in on a recent meeting with Linit and Sidwell about the project. Hobbs farms corn and soybeans and has a small cow and calf operation on 1,500 acres about six miles northeast of Mexico, Mo.

He said the project was still in the early stages and that the need for funding hadn’t been discussed. “I think this is a wonderful project. If a country can feed itself, that breeds stability,” Hobbs said. “As farmers, that’s our job: feeding people. Any time you can help a struggling country feed itself, it’s good for everybody.”

Dunlap spent his two weeks in Nangarhar Province this summer making contacts with the key players: religious and tribal leaders and government and university officials. They are all on board and waiting for Dunlap’s return late this fall.

“We want to show success, then expand it,” Sidwell said. “If you have the confidence of the local people, the farmers, then they support our long-term goals of stability in the area. We need to provide alternative sources of revenue for them.”