In at least one corner of Iraq’s vast lawless territories, farmers are trying their hand at a deadly new cash crop: Opium poppies.

The Independent’s Patrick Cockburn reports that some cultivators in southern Iraq are growing the plants, setting off the fear that the breakdown of law and order and the economy in Iraq may have created an environment in which drug production thrives.

The Independent (UK) has learned from “Iraqi sources familiar with the area” that the poppies bloom in former rice fields west and south of the Iraqi city of Diwaniya along the Euphrates River.

Opium poppies are used to produce the narcotics opium and heroin, as well as morphine and other opiate-derivates used in medicine.

The Independent repeats the long-known information that Iraq is used as a distribution center for heroin, smuggled from Afghanistan through Iran, and then via Iraq on to the rich markets of the Gulf countries. However, at least in the Diwaniya area, some are experimenting with opium production. Cockburn writes:

The shift to opium production is taking place in the well-irrigated land west and south of Diwaniya around the towns of Ash Shamiyah, al Ghammas and Ash Shinafiyah. The farmers are said to be having problems in growing the poppies because of the intense heat and high humidity. It is too dangerous for foreign journalists to visit Diwaniya but the start of opium poppy cultivation is attested by two students from there and a source in Basra familiar with the Iraqi drugs trade.

Cockburn notes parallels to the anarchic environment in post-Taliban Afghanistan, where the fall of that regime sent opium production spiking.

The continuing distribution trade in drugs moving from Afghanistan via Iran, still benefits Iraqi militias and criminal gangs, Cockburn writes. He adds:

But it is evident from the start of opium production around Diwaniya that some gangs think there is money to be made by following the example of Afghanistan. Given that they can guarantee much higher profits from growing opium poppies than can be made from rice, many impoverished Iraqi farmers are likely to cultivate the new crop.

Cockburn writes that “according to one report” recent violence in Diwaniya “was initially motivated by rivalry over control of opium production but soon widened into a general turf war.”

The Mahdi Army and Iraqi forces have clashed on a number of occasions in Diwaniya in recent months, and US forces have fought pitched battles and besieged the city in cooperation with Iraqi forces. A US soldier was killed in Diwaniya on Saturday.

The region’s governor, Khaleel Jaleel Hamza held a press conference on Monday, announcing a “pact of honor” between rival groups in Diwaniya, The agreement provides that foreign troops stay out of Diwaniya and that security responsibilities be assigned to Iraqi forces.

Cockburn also notes a historical precedent for the cultivation of opium in southern Iraq, noting that the narcotic was grown in Mesopotamia “as early as 3,400BC and was known to the ancient Sumerians as Hul Gil, the ‘joy plant.’ Some of the earliest written references to the opium poppy come from clay tablets found in the ruins of the city of Nippur, just to the east of Diwaniya.”