There is no doubt Afghanistan still has a poppy crisis: In 2006 the country that since late 2001 has been secured by some 40,000 Western soldiers produced some 92 percent of the world's illegal opium, directly involving at least 13 percent of the country's total population. In some areas, poppy production is the only way to realistically make money. Although Western and Afghan authorities have tried to contain the poppy production with different approaches (including burning poppy fields), nothing has succeeded.

Arguing that the current efforts are driving the farmers into the arms of the Taliban and fuel insecurity in the country, the Senlis Council recently offered a village-based economic solution to Afghanistan's poppy crisis.

The envisioned pilot project would legalize and license the "controlled cultivation of poppy to produce essential poppy-based medicines such as morphine and codeine," with unlicensed poppy cultivation remaining illegal, the council said in a statement.

Entire villages, instead of individual farmers, would be licensed to cultivate the poppies, which are then being transformed in small-scale laboratories in the villages, which then could, together with government officials and international actors "secure the entire manufacturing process, from the seeds to the final medicine tablets."

Such a model would have "beneficial 'ink blot' effects on security and economic development in the regions around the villages, and thus a positive effect on the international community's mission in Afghanistan," the council said. It points to examples in other countries where such an approach has proved successful, for example in Turkey and Thailand.

While the pilot project has the backing of the European Parliament and will go to European Union foreign ministers for consideration at a meeting later this month, experts are not convinced.

"While the general idea isn't bad, it can't work in Afghanistan because the country has no functioning government that could enforce the project's various aspects," Citha Maass, an Afghanistan expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, a Berlin-based think tank, told United Press International in a telephone interview. "The entire concept would need a much larger approach: You need alternative crops and micro credits, you need to ensure market access and marketing possibilities, and you need to break the opposition of the intermediate traders, some of whom are linked to government families, who are benefiting from the poppy trade."

The Afghan government has also opposed the idea, and even in Brussels the project isn't without controversy: A European Commission document obtained by the BBC argues that buying poppy from farmers could have a negative effect.

"Farmers could see this as an incentive to further expand production. This would not be an appropriate use of resources for the international donor community or the Afghan government," the BBC quoted the document as saying.

The Senlis Council argues, however, that for the drought-struck southern provinces, poppy cultivation is the only option for an agricultural future, as it is an especially drought-resistant plant. Yet by making use of an existing irrigation project distributing water from the Helmand River, the southern province of Helmand could very well succeed in growing alternate crops, Maass said.

The German, who has lived in Afghanistan and traveled there again this past summer, argues for a more individualized approach that takes into account the regional differences and necessities.

"We need a special individual concept for each province," Maass said. "The northeast, which is characterized by high mountains, needs a different approach than the dry and hot southern province of Helmand."

Maass has long advocated that idea; she also lobbies for the creation of a special Afghanistan office in the German chancellor's office to better coordinate Berlin's reconstruction efforts.

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