PANJWAII DISTRICT, Afghanistan - A frail Afghan man is brought before Capt. Patrick Chartrand, begging for the return of five bags full of drugs that weigh about twice as much as him.
"All the people are growing opium," the man, who appears to be in his 60s, says in Pashto.
"I am a poor man. What can I do?"
A group of Afghan National Army officers mentored by Canadians seized 108 kilograms of what's believed to be opium earlier this week. Military officials will test it later for verification.
It is the largest drug haul in an eastern swath of Panjwaii district since the Royal 22e Regiment's Bravo Company arrived in the area in early December.
"I was pretty surprised about this," said Chartrand, 32. "I was not expecting that in my day when I woke up."
For Chartrand, the catch shows that the local kandak, or Afghan battalion, is taking a serious stance against poppy production in a country that is the world's primary producer of opium, the raw ingredient used to make heroin.
"It's pretty obvious that there's a lot of farmers around here that are cultivating poppy, cultivating other elicit material," he said.
"I'm not too sure about how they enforce the laws ... but I know that at least the kandak here is pretty straightforward on that.
"They want to make sure that the people don't grow any type of illegal drugs, although it's kind of hard to control that."
The seizure comes a month after the United Nations released a report warning that a dramatic jump in opium prices could lure more Afghan farmers to grow the illicit crop this year, undoing the hard-won gains against the drug trade in recent years.
There was a 48 per cent plunge in opium production last year mainly due to a plant disease that ravaged crops. That was the likely factor driving the average price of dry opium to US$169 per kilogram, up from US$64 in 2009, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime's Afghanistan Opium Survey.
"This bonanza (for some) may provide farmers with a strong incentive to continue growing opium and even expand cultivation in 2011," the report said.
While opium production dropped throughout most of Afghanistan, cultivation in the southern province of Kandahar, where the majority of Canada's 2,900 troops in the war-torn country are based, rose 30 per cent.
The UN estimates that 25,835 hectares of land in Kandahar province was used to grow opium -- roughly half the geographic size of Montreal.
The opium growing season lasts from December to May and is about six times more profitable than wheat. It helps pour cash into the coffers of insurgent groups and is largely responsible for the spike in violence ISAF forces and Afghan civilians encounter during the country's summer fighting season.
With the funds from the trade of opium and other drugs, insurgents pay young, often unemployed men eager for a quick buck to take up arms, plant improvised explosive devices, serve as spies or help their cause in any other way possible.
Back in the rural district of Panjwaii, the drugs are weighed and stored in a locked sea container. The kandak's operations officer tells Chartrand he wants to burn the drugs.
"It's your decision," Chartrand replies.
The man whose drugs were seized is made to stand in front of the five bags as Afghan troops take photographs. They decide to let him go, but before they do, they want to make an example of him.
"It's so that they can show the population that if you're caught with drugs that you will be punished, although in this case they didn't arrest him and that's their business," Chartrand says.
"We let them decide what is the punishment for someone doing illegal activities and we don't get involved in that. It's an Afghan issue."
