Pubdate: Fri, 16 Feb 2001
Source: Alameda Times-Star (CA)
Copyright: 2001 MediaNews Group, Inc. and ANG Newspapers
Contact:  P.O. Box 28884 ,Oakland, CA 94612
Fax: (510) 208-6477
Website: http://www.timesstar.com/

TALIBAN CRACKDOWN WIPING OUT OPIUM PRODUCTION

Former Poppy Fields Now Grow Wheat, Say U.N. Observers

JALALABAD, Afghanistan -- U.N. drug control officers said the Taliban 
religious militia has virtually wiped out opium production in Afghanistan 
- -- once the world's largest producer -- since banning poppy cultivation in 
July.

A 12-member team from the U.N. Drug Control Program spent two weeks 
searching most of the nation's largest opium-producing areas and found so 
few poppies that they do not expect any opium to come out of Afghanistan 
this year.

"We are not just guessing. We have seen the proof in the fields," said 
Bernard Frahi, regional director for the U.N. program in Afghanistan and 
Pakistan. He laid out photographs of vast tracts of land cultivated with 
wheat alongside pictures of the same fields taken a year earlier -- a sea 
of blood-red poppies.

A State Department official said Thursday all the information the United 
States has received so far indicates the poppy crop had decreased, but he 
did not believe it was eliminated.

Last year, Afghanistan produced nearly 4,000 tons of opium -- the milky 
substance drained from the poppy plant.

It was a world record for opium production, the United Nations said -- more 
than all other countries combined, including the "Golden Triangle," where 
the borders of Thailand, Laos and Myanmar meet.

Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban's supreme leader, banned poppy growing 
before the November planting season and augmented it with a religious edict 
making it contrary to the tenets of Islam.

The Taliban, which has imposed a strict brand of Islam in the 95 percent of 
Afghanistan it controls, has set fire to heroin laboratories and jailed 
farmers until they agreed to destroy their poppy crops.

The U.N. surveyors crisscrossed Helmand, Kandahar, Urzgan and Nangarhar 
provinces and parts of two others -- areas responsible for 86 percent of 
the opium produced in Afghanistan last year.

They covered 80 percent of the land in those provinces that last year had 
been awash in poppies.

This year they found poppies growing on barely an acre here and there, 
Frahi said. The rest -- about 175,000 acres -- was clean.

He said indications are that no poppies were planted this season and that, 
as a result, there hasn't been any production of opium -- but that 
officials would keep checking.

The State Department counternarcotics official said the department would 
make its own estimate of the poppy crop. Information received so far 
suggests there will be a decrease, but how much is not yet clear, he said, 
speaking on condition of anonymity.

We do not think by any stretch of the imagination that poppy cultivation in 
Afghanistan has been eliminated. But we, like the rest of the world, 
welcome positive news.

The Drug Enforcement Administration declined to comment.

- -No U.S. government official can enter Afghanistan because of security 
concerns stemming from the presence of suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden.

Poppies are harvested in March and April, which is why the survey was done 
now. Tucci said it would have been impossible for the poppies to have been 
harvested already.

The areas searched by the U.N. surveyors are the most fertile lands under 
Taliban control. Other areas, though they are somewhat fertile, have not 
traditionally been poppy growing areas and farmers are struggling to raise 
any crops at all because of severe drought. The rest of the land held by 
the Taliban is mountainous or desert, where poppies could not grow.

Karim Rahimi, the U.N. drug control liaison in Jalalabad, capital of 
Nangarhar province, said farmers were growing wheat or onions in fields 
where they once grew poppies.

"It is amazing, really, when you see the fields that last year were filled 
with poppies and this year there is wheat," he said.

The Taliban enforced the ban by threatening to arrest village elders and 
mullahs who allowed poppies to be grown. Taliban soldiers patrolled in 
trucks armed with rocket-propelled grenade launchers. About 1,000 people in 
Nangarhar who tried to defy the ban were arrested and jailed until they 
agreed to destroy their crops.

Signs throughout Nangarhar warn against drug production and use, some 
calling it an "illicit phenomenon." Another reads: "Be drug free, be happy."

Last year, poppies grew on 12,600 acres of land in Nangarhar province. 
According to the U.N. survey, poppies were planted on only 17 acres there 
this season and all were destroyed by the Taliban.

"The Taliban have done their work very seriously," Frahi said.

But the ban has badly hurt farmers in one of the world's poorest countries, 
shattered by two decades of war and devastated by drought.

Ahmed Rehman, who shares less than three acres in Nangarhar with his three 
brothers, said the opium he produced last year on part of the land brought 
him $1,100.

This year, he says, he will be lucky to get $300 for the onions and cattle 
feed he planted on the entire parcel.

"Life is very bad for me this year," he said. "Last year I was able to buy 
meat and wheat and now this year there is nothing."

But Rehman said he never considered defying the ban.

"The Taliban were patrolling all the time. Of course I was afraid. I did 
not want to go to jail and lose my freedom and my dignity," he said, 
gesturing with dirt-caked hands.

Shams-ul-Haq Sayed, an officer of the Taliban drug control office in 
Jalalabad, said farmers need international aid.

"This year was the most important for us because growing poppies was part 
of their culture, and the first years are always the most difficult," he said.

Tucci said discussions are under way on how to help the farmers.

Western diplomats in Pakistan have suggested the Taliban is simply trying 
to drive up the price of opium they have stockpiled. The State Department 
official also said Afghanistan could do more by destroying drug stockpiles 
and heroin labs and arresting producers and traffickers.

Frahi dismissed that as "nonsense" and said it is drug traffickers and 
shopkeepers who have stockpiles. Two pounds of opium worth $35 last year 
are now worth as much as $360, he said.

Mullah Amir Mohammed Haqqani, the Taliban's top drug official in Nangarhar, 
said the ban would remain regardless of whether the Taliban received aid or 
international recognition.

"It is our decree that there will be no poppy cultivation. It is banned 
forever in this country," he said. "Whether we get assistance or not, poppy 
growing will never be allowed again in our country."
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