Pubdate: Wed, 26 Dec 2001 Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution (GA) Copyright: 2001 Cox Interactive Media. Contact: http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/28 Author: Craig Nelson, Cox News Service Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin) Afghanistan Turns Corner: WITH TALIBAN GONE, POPPY CULTIVATION SURGES GHOCHAK, Afghanistan -- There is widespread doubt here that anything resembling law and order will bloom in Afghanistan in the next six months. There is no doubt at all that opium poppies will bloom --- in abundance. "Everyone is planting," says Ashoqullah, a 25-year-old landowner, who uses only one name. "In a few months, these fields will be covered in a blanket of spectacular red-and-white flowers. We'll draw the ooze from the flower bulbs, pack it in plastic bags or small soap cartons and sell it at the bazaar." As Ashoqullah licks his lips over his future bounty, farmers bend over in fields behind him, slashing at white heads of cauliflower and yanking fragrant spring onions from the soil. They are scurrying to harvest food crops so they can sow poppy seeds in this village, five miles west of the eastern city of Jalalabad. The war against terrorism has, for the moment at least, defeated the war on drugs in Afghanistan. The Taliban has been vanquished, and so has the ban on cultivating opium poppies. The prohibition, which carried a three-month jail sentence, produced a 96 percent drop in production of opium, from more than a million pounds in 1999 to 40,600 pounds this year, said the U.N. Drug Control Program. With the demise of the puritanical Taliban, one of the world's poorest countries now is expected to regain its standing as the world's leading producer of opium and chief supplier of heroin to Europe. Mirakbar, who also uses only one name, can barely suppress his glee at his anticipated windfall. The walled, mud-brick fortress in nearby Ghani Khel - --- known across the region as the Opium Bazaar --- is abuzz with activity as he and some 300 opium merchants ply their trade. Operating in narrow smoky aisles and from wooden-door stalls equipped with little more than a scale and a tidy pile of plastic bags, Mirakbar and the other dealers buy the opium paste from farmers for roughly $90 a pound. In turn, he says, they sell it to brokers for $100. The raw opium is then shuttled by truck, mule or taxi into Pakistan, where it is processed into heroin worth billions of dollars to users around the world. Says the 25-year-old Mirakbar: "The Taliban may have tried to prevent farmers from growing it, but they stockpiled it in warehouses and were involved in trading it. The new government will be, too." Ashoqullah says many farmers have families of 15 members and cannot survive by raising vegetables. The issue is strictly economic. They abhor the use of opium and other recreational drugs, though they have in their midst some of the most coveted opium and hashish in the world. They rarely drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes. When asked if farmers in a country beset by chronic hunger, malnutrition and drought should reject the lure of poppies, Ashoqullah grows angry, pointing to a 90-by-300-foot plot of freshly-plowed land and the mound of the vegetables that had been cleared from it the previous day. "If you want it, take it and put it in a truck and carry it away," he said of the vegetables. "We don't need any more, and the farmers here can't survive on it." - --- MAP posted-by: Jackl