The Afghan Village That Uses Opium as Its Currency

By Chris Sands in Badakhshan, Afghanistan
Published: 04 May 2007
Paper money has all but disappeared from the village of Shahran-e-Khash. Instead the common currency is the one resource Afghanistan has no shortage of - opium.
At the market in this remote north-eastern corner of Afghanistan, five litres of engine oil - worth around £5 - can be bought for 100g of opium. Two bottles of Coca-Cola will set you back 18g. Even the children use opium to buy goods.
"All the children put a little bit of opium on a leaf as payment. They ask the shopkeeper, 'Please give me a pen, give me two notebooks, give me two biscuits and three pieces of chewing gum'," explained Shahran Pur, a tribal elder.
Afghanistan is the world's largest producer of opium and the drugs trade has become a major headache for President Hamid Karzai and his Nato allies. While poppy farming often helps fund the Taliban-led insurgency, officials are acutely aware of how important it also is to the general population. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Shahran-e-Khash, a remote village two hours from Faizabad, the capital of the relatively peaceful province of Badakhshan.
Its entire economy is built around opium, with everyone from children to the local hardware store owner dealing in the drug. People here are so poor they frequently don't have the money to buy basic household goods. Instead, they use the poppies they grow in the surrounding fields to purchase what they need.
If the poppy is not in season the shopkeeper will keep a record in a ledger of the items people have taken and the debts are paid off after the harvest. When he finally has the drug, he sells it to a third party who comes from outside the area. The money he makes from this transaction is then used to replenish his stock.
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