By Kevin P. Corbley

Kevin Corbley is a communications consultant specializing in geospatial technology; e-mail: kevin@corbleycommunications.com.

The "War on Terror" is fought on many fronts, with a variety of tactics and technologies. In Afghanistan, drug interdiction has been implemented as a tactical weapon aimed at disrupting the flow of cash that finances some terror groups and their activities.

With the stakes continuing to grow, the U.S. government and its allies constantly seek more-efficient methods to curb the trafficking of illicit drugs from Afghanistan and other nations. Working closely with an international contingent in Afghanistan, UXB International has played a major role in developing and implementing procedures for finding and destroying the poppy fields that produce much of the world’s opium and heroin supply.

As part of the DynCorp International lead Afghan Eradication Force (AEF), UXB International helped devise an inexpensive and relatively simple geospatial technique using Global Positioning System (GPS)-based photo mapping to enhance the safety of poppy-eradication activities and make it easer to verify effectiveness.

Locating Poppies

The poppy fields of Afghanistan are known to produce particularly potent forms of opium and heroin, which demand high prices on the streets of Europe, Asia and the United States. The poppy plant is harvested by scratching the bulb at the head of the stem, which makes the opium-based sap seep out so it can be collected. Opium is the initial product, but it can be further refined to produce heroin.

Steady increases in the Afghan supply during the last several years prompted the International Narcotics Law Enforcement Program to focus on cutting off the illicit drug flow at its source—in the country’s rugged interior mountains.

The three primary players in the Afghan drug-interdiction program are the governments of Afghanistan, Great Britain and United States, with the British being the lead agency. UXB International, which specializes in the disposal of unexploded ordnance, received a subcontract through DynCorp International to help destroy the poppies in the fields where they grow.

"AEF’s job is to go into a specified area, find the poppy plants, cut them, dispose of them and verify the work," says Pat Fogleson, a UXB International contractor and retired U.S. Army officer.

According to Fogleson, the entire process begins and ends with geospatial technology. Before the eradication teams head into the mountainous Afghan terrain, an international board obtains remote-sensing satellite imagery of the country and examines different regions to select target areas that warrant further scrutiny. Imagery analysts typically identify likely poppy-growing sites based on a combination of spectral and environmental evidence gleaned from the satellite images.

A Russian MI-8 Gunship provides security by circling a field in support of inspections and destruction efforts. A ground-inspection team carries back poppy samples to the waiting gunship.

"Poppies can be identified by their spectral signature in multispectral imagery," notes Fogleson. "But this signature is shared by several other plants in the region, so the imagery analysts look for environmental conditions that favor poppy growth."

Poppy plants, known by many for their bright-red blooms, require arable soil and adequate water supplies. With mechanical irrigation unavailable in remote parts of the country, the poppies usually are planted near rivers and streams. Soil preparation for poppy planting also is unique, yielding an early season plowing pattern that can often be spotted in imagery.

Aerial Inspection

After suspected poppy fields are located in the imagery, the coordinates are provided to the field teams for closer visual inspection. The crews depart by helicopter to the targets, often hidden in mountain valleys, to confirm and pinpoint the locations of actual poppy fields. These airborne missions typically require a flying altitude of about 150-200 feet above ground level to visually verify that poppies are indeed growing in the fields.

Poppies are harvested by milking the plant through slits in the side of the flower bulb. Each bulb can be harvested five or six times.

On each flight, the teams take two critical pieces of equipment: a high-end digital camera and a highly accurate handheld GPS receiver with an external antenna. Just before takeoff, the two devices are synchronized by taking a digital photo of the GPS screen. This step correlates every picture taken that day with accurate GPS location points via GPS-Photo Link photo-mapping software from GeoSpatial Experts.

Referencing the digital photos of poppy fields with their accurate location coordinates is a basic, but crucial, aspect of each mission.

"We used to try to take photos and then copy down their GPS coordinates on paper—while hanging out the open door of the helicopter," explains Fogleson. "It didn’t work so well."

After the screen of the GPS receiver is photographed, the GPS unit is programmed to collect a track log throughout the flight, recording one location every 10 seconds. The mission photographer focuses on taking pictures of the confirmed poppy fields from several angles without worrying about jotting down the locations.

Back at the base each night, the digital photographs and GPS track logs are downloaded from their respective devices onto a laptop computer running the GPS-Photo Link software. Using the mission start time displayed on the screen of the GPS unit in the first photo taken, the photo-mapping software correlates each subsequent digital photo, which is time-stamped in the camera, with its location points in the track log. The software then affixes the location coordinates, along with acquisition time and date on each photograph.

Afghans and Afghan police destroy a remote poppy field by hand.

"We know precisely where each photo was taken, and we can mark these locations on the maps provided to us by the program administrators," says Fogleson. "If we had a GIS in the field, the software would integrate the digital photos as attributes on the map. But since we don’t have GIS, we mark the map, attach the photos and send a report to the embassies in country."

Eradicating Poppies

Soon after confirming poppy-field locations from the air, AEF teams set out on vehicle to find the crops in person. This ground-level visit is necessary for two reasons: 1) the poppies must be identified absolutely through an up-close inspection, and 2) an expert must assess the plants’ growth stage.

"This is critical, because if we destroy the plants too early in the growing cycle, they can grow back," notes Fogleson.

The process of photographing the field is repeated on the ground during this visit to verify the poppies’ location and stage of growth. As occurred in the air, a GPS receiver pinpoints the locations of each photograph. The photographer typically tries to capture digital pictures from as many corner points of the field as possible. When the photos are correlated with GPS locations in the photo-mapping software, the team can make accurate acreage calculations for each field.

Due to inherent dangers involved, the crews want to get out of the field as quickly as possible, and the photo-mapping technique lets them make a fast and accurate assessment of field size in a matter of minutes.

Poppy fields’ distinct irrigation patterns make them identifiable from the air. A photo shows fields being prepared for planting (top). Aerial recon, however, is more difficult when poppy fields are intermixed with other crops. Lighter-colored fields (bottom) indicate poppy fields with white flowers.

The photos and annotated maps then are supplied to program administrators, along with written reports. The officials take into account the location, size and growth-status of various fields to prioritize and plan the cutting missions that will follow. When the time is right, a contingent of up to 400 individuals will trek back into the mountains to destroy the crops in selected fields.

"The majority of the cutting team is composed of Afghan police, but there are also about 30 international advisors," adds Fogleson. "The Afghanis are in charge of the cut, and the internationals are there to advise, provide training and verify the cut."

There are three methods deployed to destroy a poppy field:

1. A team plows the plants under the soil using tractors, but getting the vehicles to remote and rugged fields often is difficult.

2. A more common technique is to attach drags and cutter blades to small four-wheel-drive vehicles and run them back and forth through the crops.

3. In smaller fields, men hack down the plants with sickles.

Verification of the cut is crucial. After the poppies have been eradicated in the entire field, the digital camera and GPS receiver are again implemented, and photos are taken at every corner point of the destroyed poppy field.

Tractors make quick work of a poppy field, but not all plants are destroyed in the first pass.

As before, photos of the destruction are correlated with GPS location points in the GPS-Photo Link software and provided to program officials in Kabul, Afghanistan, where a map analyst confirms that the correct fields were destroyed and that the proper acreage was eliminated.

"The location-stamped photos enable us to prove with a high degree of accuracy that an entire field was cut," adds Fogleson. "It is very important to physically verify a cut, because, with the amount of money involved, it would be easy for the drug trade to pay people to misrepresent the area cut. If a team is sent to destroy 200 hectares of poppy in a given field, it can be verified that 200 hectares were cut."

Photo Mapping in Law Enforcement

Looking at the "big picture," the team believes that the photo-mapping technique has improved the overall accuracy of drug-interdiction efforts in Afghanistan. The U.S., British and Afghani governments use a variety of technologies, including satellite imagery, to estimate the nationwide acreage of poppy crops in the country every year.

The GPS-verified cutting technique enables them to more accurately determine the percentage of crop destroyed, which helps predict how much opium and heroin won’t be reaching the streets.

Another advantage of photo mapping is its simplicity and low cost. Now anyone can be taught to use digital cameras and handheld GPS devices, which are plentiful in the public-safety community. Fogleson views photo mapping as another means to collect evidence, and he believes that this technique can be applied extensively in drug-interdiction efforts as well as general law-enforcement activities elsewhere in the world.