AID grant no. 306-0210-C-00-0820-00 to Development Alternatives Inc. in support of the narcotics awareness control project in Afghanistan

The project, to be implemented by Development Alternatives, Inc. (DAI), will have three components: a narcotics awareness campaign; a poppy reduction and elimination program; and information and research. Narcotics awareness activities will be aimed at the Mujahideen and their supporting population inside Afghanistan, resistance political leadership, the donor community providing cross-border assistance from Pakistan, religious leaders, and, to a lesser extent, the refugee population. The campaign will use images, radio, printed messages, traveling medical or communications teams, and other media to draw the connection between poppy cultivation and drug addiction. The campaign will also invoke religious and social mores to deliver strong anti-narcotics messages. A poppy cultivation and elimination program will be conducted in areas where they have a reasonable chance of success; 7-12 sites are targeted. DAI will create a special unit (to include Afghan income generation, agricultural extension, and agricultural engineering experts) to negotiate poppy reduction and elimination agreements with commanders or local bodies whereby development resources will be provided to facilitate an immediate poppy ban, or, if this is not realistic, gradual reduction and elimination. Resources to be provided under these agreements will include agricultural inputs, irrigation, extension services, and, possibly, infrastructure, education, health, and income generation activities. DAI will also develop strategies to encourage enforcement of the poppy ban. A three-part information and research component will establish the analytic basis for specific project activities. (1) A monitoring and evaluation team will track the first two components to identify successes and failures and the causes thereof; results will be used to modify the project as necessary. (2) The project will finance research into the socio-political-economic determinants of poppy cultivation, as well as strategies to prevent and reduce opium production. (2) The project will study the feasibility of high-value export crops as alternatives to poppy. Congressional Notification Sheet of 5/11/91 eliminates the poppy reduction and elimination component and renames the project Narcotics Research and Awareness. (PD-CBN-313)