Pubdate: Sun, 25 Nov 2001
Source: Observer, The (UK)
Copyright: 2001 The Observer
Contact:  http://www.observer.co.uk/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/315
Author: Paul Harris

VICTORIOUS WARLORDS SET TO OPEN THE OPIUM FLOODGATES

Sayed Ali welcomed the fall of the Taliban, but the new political and 
social freedoms now on offer mean little to the poverty-stricken Afghan 
farmer. What is important is that he can grow opium poppies again - he has 
already planted his first crop. In the small mud-brick village of Chinar 
Khalia, near the eastern city of Jalalabad, Ali and other local farmers are 
now looking forward to a bumper harvest around mid-April. The Taliban ban 
on poppy-growing, which slashed Afghan opium production by 94 per cent last 
year, is over. And the impact on the West will be huge - 90 per cent of 
Europe's heroin comes from opium grown in Afghanistan.

'The Taliban order on poppy-growing was false,' Ali said. 'It hurt many 
farmers that they could not grow poppies. Now I will earn money again.'

But the wrinkled old farmer, whose leathery skin has been baked nut-brown 
after a lifetime in the fields, is not the only one set to cash in. The new 
warlords, who have replaced the Taliban across large swaths of Afghanistan, 
will earn millions of dollars too. The Northern Alliance has always 
indulged in opium production, but now it has captured some of the richest 
opium-growing lands in the country.

Of Afghanistan's 29 provinces, 10 grow poppies. Of these the richest are 
Helmand in the south, still under Taliban control, and Nangrahar in the 
east, which has fallen to local warlords. With massive potential riches 
from opium at stake, the province is experiencing fierce factional fighting.

Ali expects the new rulers of the province to encourage him to grow as much 
opium as possible. 'Before the ban the government used to collect taxes on 
my poppies, now the warlords will collect them. We will have no problems 
from them,' he said.

Opium-growing has a long history in Afghanistan, a tradition shattered by 
last year's sudden Taliban ban on poppy planting after several years of 
unofficial tolerance and profit from the crop. 'Last year was the first 
time in 50 years that poppies had not been grown in my village,' Ali said.

During the ban the only source of poppy production was territory held by 
the Northern Alliance. It tripled its production. In the high valleys of 
Badakhshan - an area controlled by troops loyal to the former President 
Burhannudin Rabbani - the number of hectares planted last year jumped from 
2,458 to 6,342. Alliance fields accounted for 83 per cent of total Afghan 
production of 185 tonnes of opium during the ban.

Now that the Alliance has captured such rich poppy-growing areas as 
Nangrahar, production is set to rocket. Helmand, too, is being replanted by 
its Taliban rulers, who have abandoned their anti-opium stance and want to 
cash in on their remaining sources of revenue.

Western and Pakistani officials fear that, within a year or two, 
Afghanistan could again reach its peak production figures of 60,000 
hectares of poppies producing 2,800 tonnes of opium - more than half the 
world's output.

Alliance factions and other warlords deny benefiting from opium production, 
but it is an open secret that nearly all tolerate it. Most are happy just 
to cream off the taxes, but others have been more directly involved. Hazrat 
Ali, one of the new warlords in control in Nangrahar, ran Jalalabad airport 
in the mid-Nineties at a time when weekly flights to India and the Gulf 
carried huge amounts of opium to Western markets. During the war against 
the Russians, the huge and illicit drugs trade nurtured by the mujahideen 
was ignored and tolerated by the CIA and other Western intelligence 
agencies in return for their commitment to fight the Soviet Union.

Now, with the Taliban ban on poppy-growing lifted, it would appear that 
Afghanistan is facing a return to those days. The main Nangrahar opium 
bazaar of Ghani Khel has reopened for business. Afghan opium traders 
arriving in the Pakistani city of Peshawar claim 100 of the market's 300 
stalls now sell opium blocks stockpiled during the ban. The same is true of 
Kandahar, where the city's main opium bazaar escaped the US bombing.

'All our evidence is consistent. They are replanting in a major way,' said 
Bernard Frahi of the United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime 
Prevention located in Islamabad.

For Afghan farmers it is a simple choice. A farmer can earn £6,000 for a 
hectare of opium, compared to just £34 for wheat.

Ali knows opium produces heroin and disapproves of drug use, but he has a 
family of 14 to feed and his land has been gripped by three years of 
drought. 'I am poor and need money for clothes and food. Perhaps if 
Afghanistan becomes rich and there is peace, I will not need to grow 
poppies,' he said.

In the quiet Peshawar suburb of University Town, nestled between the 
offices of Western aid agencies, a crowd gathers each morning outside a 
forbidding steel gate. Inside, the roof of a sprawling mansion can be seen. 
The beggars are here for alms. The man who lives here is Peshawar's most 
powerful drugs baron and the poor know he can afford to be generous. Other 
large houses dotted around Peshawar tell the same story. Locals refer to 
them as 'the houses that drugs built'. Peshawar lies on the main smuggling 
route south. It was also the home of the Afghan opposition during Soviet 
and Taliban rule.

In the lawless Pashtun tribal areas just outside the city limits, opium is 
sold openly. It is easy, although illegal, to buy. In a shop on the main 
road to Afghanistan, 26-year-old Imran cuts off a 50g piece of sticky, dark 
brown opium resin, known as tor.  It costs just £7.

Foreigners are not allowed here, but it is just a short drive over the 
tribal boundary past police guards who pay no attention to the traffic. On 
the wall behind Imran hang a Kalashnikov machine gun and a shotgun - a sign 
of the dangers of the drugs trade. But business will soon be good, he says. 
The Northern Alliance warlords will see to that. 'They would be stupid to 
try and ban the poppies. They make so much money.'

It is estimated that when production picks up, about one million Afghan 
farmers will earn £70 million from growing poppies. That is a huge industry 
in a country with little other obvious sources of foreign money exchange.
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