Pubdate: Fri, 08 Dec 2000
Source: Boston Globe (MA)
Copyright: 2000 Globe Newspaper Company
Section: Page A01
Contact:  P.O. Box 2378, Boston, MA 02107-2378
Feedback: http://extranet.globe.com/LettersEditor/default.asp
Website: http://www.boston.com/globe/
Author: John Donnelly

Note:  First of two parts; Tomorrow: Embattled force tries to keep heroin 
at bay

AFGHANISTAN CLAMPS DOWN ON POPPY GROWTH FOR HEROIN

PASHMOL, Afghanistan - Through acre after acre of farmland in southern 
Afghanistan, there is not a poppy field in view. It is perhaps the most 
startling sight anywhere in the global drug trafficking arena.

Here, the world's most productive region for the manufacture of heroin, 
farmers say they have switched from growing opium poppies to wheat or 
sunflowers, or have let their fields lie fallow, at least for the growing 
season that started five weeks ago. United Nations drug control officials 
confirm the sudden drop in poppy plantings, although US analysts remain 
skeptical.

The farmers' decision not to plant opium poppies stems directly from a 
simple decree four months ago by the supreme leader of Afghanistan's ruling 
Taliban movement, Mullah Mohammad Omar, who declared in a radio broadcast 
that growing opium poppies was against sharia, or Islamic law.

''We all used to plant poppy once upon a time,'' said a grinning Habib 
Ullah, 45, sitting in a field he recently seeded with wheat. ''We planted 
it on all this land around you for the last five, six years. But they have 
banned that. We adhere to the edict of Mullah Omar. If he hadn't said 
anything, we would have planted poppy again, believe me.''

If the clampdown on heroin production proves effective, it will eventually 
have major ramifications in the global drug trade, including tightening 
supply, raising prices, and possibly opening new routes that would divert 
more Colombian heroin from the United States to Europe. Afghanistan alone 
produces an estimated 72 percent of the world's heroin.

US analysts believe it could be simply a one-season dropoff because of a 
worldwide glut of opium. They also suggested that it could be motivated by 
the Taliban's fear of a growing number of heroin addicts inside 
Afghanistan, not from international pressure to crack down on cultivation.

''I think there is something different about this ban,'' said a State 
Department official knowledgable about Afghanistan who spoke on condition 
of anonymity. ''But the Taliban's sincerity on eradicating opium poppy is 
in deep doubt - simply because they have had bans in the past and the poppy 
crop has been able to expand.''

During the six years of the Taliban's expanding control of Afghanistan, the 
poppy harvest has tripled, according to US estimates.

The effect from this growing season would probably take months to be felt 
in the United States and Europe, although one early indication was that the 
price of opium doubled in November in Pakistan, Afghanistan's neighbor, 
after reports circulated that many Afghan farmers were not growing the crop 
this season.

In areas of northern Afghanistan controlled by anti-Taliban forces, 
however, the trade still flourishes. Traffickers are overwhelming border 
guards in Tajikistan, carrying heroin and opium gum manufactured inside 
Afghanistan from last season's crop.

Afghanistan supplies 80 percent of Europe's heroin and 5 to 15 percent of 
the US supply. In recent months, US customs officials have made seizures of 
Afghan heroin in airports in Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago.

Unless there are significant stashes of opium in southwestern Asia - opium 
can be stored for years - a sudden reduction in Afghanistan would almost 
surely affect the cost of heroin sold on US streets, reversing the steady 
fall in price. In 1998, according to the US Office of National Drug Control 
Policy, the price of a pure gram of heroin was $317, one-third the price a 
decade earlier.

After Mullah Omar's edict on July 27, few outsiders said they believe the 
Taliban would shut down its most lucrative cash crop; the Taliban 
reportedly collected a 10 percent tax on the harvest as it was transported 
to heroin and opium labs. But five weeks after the beginning of the growing 
season, there are no signs of poppy shoots along main roads and canals 
where they blossomed in years past, said senior UN drug-control officials.

''In the provinces which we have observed in the past two months, there are 
no traces of opium plantations,'' said Sandro Tucci, spokesman for the UN 
Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention, yesterday from Vienna. 
''We're not saying they haven't planted anything, but that we have no 
reports of poppies growing. We will have to wait until the harvest in May.''

A senior-level UN delegation returned yesterday to Vienna from a trip in 
Afghanistan's Nangarhar province, the second-largest poppy-growing area in 
the country.

But current and former US analysts on Afghanistan's drug trade remain 
skeptical.

''There have been attempts in the past by the Taliban to at least make a 
show of attempting to control the drug trade, but it hasn't worked,'' said 
John D. Moore, a former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst now studying at 
the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.

Julie R. Sirrs, another former DIA official who now consults on Central and 
South Asian affairs, said Mullah Omar's decree was ''curious'' because the 
Taliban announced it unilaterally without using it as leverage to obtain 
its number one goal: recognition as the representative of Afghanistan in 
the United Nations.

But Sirrs and others doubted whether a drug crackdown alone would trigger 
UN recognition.

''Of the three main issues - the other two being the harboring of Osama bin 
Laden and the poor human rights record, especially with issues concerning 
women - I get the sense that internationally the drug issue comes in 
third,'' Sirrs said yesterday.

Sayed Bariadad Yaseen, the Taliban's health minister for five southern 
districts, which includes the Helmand district that produces 39 percent of 
the world's heroin, said there were multiple reasons for the ban.

''Mullah Omar decided to stop it in order to prevent further damage to the 
country's image and because of the hazards that the poppies were creating 
among young people in Europe and America,'' Yaseen said. ''Now we prefer to 
find another alternative crop for the people. We are hoping for some 
outside help on this.''

But that is unlikely in the short term. The UN is stopping a $10 million 
pilot drug control program in Nangarhar this year because of lack of 
funding. This week it launched a new appeal for funds for alternative crops 
in Afghanistan.

For farmers here, the need is immediate. The worst drought in two 
generations has crippled efforts to grow any crop, an exception being 
poppies, which require less water.

Huddled in an old poppy field now seeded with wheat, several farmers in 
this southern Afghan village said they had abandoned poppy only because of 
the potential severe penalties. They questioned why the Taliban would bend 
to the will of the West.

''The world never gave a damn about Afghanistan, so why should we give a 
damn about the world? I used to plant poppy in land just over there,'' said 
Abbas Samad, 35, pointing to a field 100 yards to the west. ''We only 
planted it because we made lots of money. Now what are we going to do?''

Habib Ullah said his poppy harvest last year netted him $2,000. This year, 
he believes he will be lucky to earn $500 from wheat. ''Everybody's obeying 
the ban,'' he said. ''But no one hopes it lasts.''
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