Intense American pressure has failed to persuade President Karzai to start chemically spraying Afghanistan’s opium poppy crop in an attempt to cripple the heroin trade.

After several days of high-level talks in Kabul, it was announced yesterday that there would be no spraying of this year’s crop, due to be harvested in two months.

Mr Karzai has promised that if other, less controversial methods of eradication — notably sending in labourers with sticks to beat the heads off the poppies — fail to have a substantial impact on the harvest, he will turn to herbicide next year, although he has ruled out aerial spraying. Said Mohammad Azam, spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Counter-Narcotics, said of the decision to beat the poppies: “If it works, that is fine. If it does not, next year ground spraying will be in the list of options.”

The decision is a blow to the Americans. Ronald Neumann, the US Ambassador in Kabul, has been pressing President Karzai to go for the spraying option this year, after last season’s bumper crop. Opium production from poppy growing rose 49 per cent last year, producing 6,700 tonnes — enough to make about 670 tonnes of heroin.

The American Embassy tried to be sanguine. “We always said that ground-based spraying is a decision for the Afghans to make,” it said.

However, the British will be relieved. Although Britain is as keen as the US to eradicate the poppy fields, it fears that a radical pesticide-spraying programme without offering alternative livelihoods for the farmers could provoke violent reactions and lead to increased confrontation with the Taleban, which uses profits from the opium business to fund its insurgency against the British forces in southern Afghanistan.

The majority of the poppies are grown in Helmand province in the south, where 5,000 British troops are based, and most of the fields are in the area of Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital. Lashkar Gah, described yesterday by British officials here as “the richest poppy-growing area in the world”, has already become a focus for Taleban suicide bombings in recent months.

A British diplomat involved in the counter-narcotics operation in Lashkar Gah told The Times: “Spraying is highly controversial because the Afghans fear the chemicals will harm people and contaminate the water.” Local farmers also complain that spraying of poppy crops will put at risk legitimate farming produce. The diplomat said: “We want to carry the local people with us, and even using the stick method to destroy the poppy crops is going to be difficult.”

It’s the old question of trying to solve a problem while winning hearts and minds. Massive chemical spraying would be more effective in reducing the opium yield but the repercussions in an area such as Lashkar Gah could seriously upset efforts being made to stabilise security in Helmand.

The Americans insist that the beating-with-sticks option is never going to be enough because the warlords, drug barons and Taleban paymasters who control the biggest poppy fields will find ways through corruption or threats of violence to preserve their investment. However, the British diplomat said that Kabul’s Afghan Eradication Force, set up to destroy the poppy crops, would start the process in two months.

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