In several villages across Afghanistan, when children felt like buying candy, they ran into their father's fields and returned with a few grams of opium folded inside a leaf. Their mothers collected it in plastic bags, trading 18 grams for a meter of fabric or two liters of cooking oil. Even a visit to the barbershop could be settled in opium.
But the economy of such villages sputtered to a halt last year when the government began aggressively enforcing a ban on opium production. Villagers were not allowed to plant their only cash crop. Now shops are empty and farmers are in debt, as entire communities spiral into poverty.
Opium is one of the biggest problems facing this troubled country, because it is deeply woven into the fabric of daily life as well as into the economics of insurgency. Afghanistan supplies 93 percent of the world's opium, and it is one of the main sources of funding for the growing Taliban movement.
Two years ago, opium, the raw ingredient used to make heroin, grew on nearly half a million acres in Afghanistan. The harvest was worth about $4 billion, or equal to nearly half the country's GDP in 2007.
Under intense international pressure, the government redoubled its effort to crack down on opium farmers. As a result, the once sloping mountain faces which were awash with pink, purple and magenta poppies, nodding in the wind were thrashed by the local forces bringing down the poppy production by 95 percent.
Although Afghan government's ban on opium is working in government-held areas, where the opium production has gone down drastically, the poor farmers who previously cultivated poppy have had to bear the brunt. The curb has put at cost the livelihood of hundreds of thousands of people.
After the government warnings that poppy fields would be destroyed and opium growers jailed, the villagers decided not to plant opium. Instead they planted wheat, barley, mustard and melons as per the instructions. However, the villagers today complain that the crops need more care than the tough opium poppy and require more water and fertilizer. They say they could have earned between two and 10 times more by planting the same land with opium.
The hole in the economy is swallowing up the community. Villagers say desperation is pushing hundreds to migrate to neighboring Iran, where they work as day labourers. Farmers throughout the region are also sinking deeply into debt. They borrow money to buy staples such as rice and oil, which they used to buy with opium. They also take loans to buy seeds and fertilizer and to rent donkeys to take the wheat to market - an expense opium did not bring because all the local shops accepted it as legal tender.
But counternarcotics experts and government officials respond that the opium ban is necessary. "These poor farmers are going to get stepped on and get hurt in this effort," says former Drug Enforcement Agency official Doug Wankel, who organised the US counternarcotics effort in Afghanistan in 2003. "But it's a pain that has to be endured for the good of the masses."
Zainuddin, the head security officer for Darayim district in Badakshan, says he feels awful every time he uproots a poppy field. "Sometimes I cry as I am hitting the poppies," says Zainuddin. "Because I know these are poor people and I am taking away the only thing they have."
A local farmer stood in silence on a recent morning as nine police officers crossed a small gulch and climbed the hill. They assaulted his crop, hitting the flowers with long sticks until they fell to the ground. He put his face in his hands.
"I didn't plant this for my own pleasure," he says. "I planted this so that my family could eat. All the rest of this is worth nothing," he says, waving at the wheat. "The choice I have to make now is either kill myself. Or leave the country.”
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