Pubdate: Mon, 01 Apr 2002
Source: Indianapolis Star (IN)
Copyright: 2002 Indianapolis Newspapers Inc.
Contact:  http://www.starnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/210
Author: Tim Golden, The New York Times

U.S., ALLIES EXPECT A GLUT OF AFGHAN OPIUM, HEROIN

Political instability, lawlessness and profit from cultivation, sale 
of drugs has made ban ineffectual.

American officials have quietly abandoned their hopes of reducing 
Afghanistan's opium production substantially this year and are now 
bracing for a harvest large enough to inundate the world's heroin and 
opium markets with cheap drugs.

While American and European officials have considered measures like 
paying Afghan opium poppy farmers to plow under their fields, they 
have concluded that continuing lawlessness and political instability 
will make significant eradication all but impossible.

Instead, U.S. officials said, they will pursue a less ambitious 
strategy: persuading Afghan leaders to carry out a modest eradication 
program as opium poppies are harvested over the next two months, if 
only to show that they were serious in declaring a ban on production 
in January.

The Americans will also encourage the destruction of opium-processing 
laboratories and a crackdown on brokers, while providing funds to 
strengthen anti-smuggling activities by neighboring countries. The 
campaign is being strongly backed and even to some extent led by 
Britain, which traces nearly all the heroin on its streets to 
Afghanistan.

But the continuing upheaval in and around Afghanistan will limit the 
effectiveness of those strategies, U.S. and British officials admit, 
making it likely that Afghanistan will produce enough opium to 
dominate the world supply once again.

"The fact is, there are no institutions in large parts of the 
country," said the Bush administration's drug policy director, John 
P. Walters. "What we can do will be extremely limited."

Reducing the output of opium is a major goal of the international 
rebuilding effort in Afghanistan.

Until the Taliban banned the cultivation of opium poppies in their 
last year in power, Afghanistan produced as much as three-fourths of 
the world's supply, and taxes on the drug trade were an important 
source of revenue. Now, the drug profits that once flowed to local 
leaders aligned with the Taliban are expected to enrich tribal 
leaders and warlords whose support is vital to the American-backed 
interim government.

But because opium poppy farming remains one of the few viable 
economic activities, officials added, any intense eradication effort 
could imperil the stability of the government and thus hamper the 
military campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaida.

"The fight against terrorism takes priority," one British law 
enforcement official said. "The fight against narcotics comes in 
second."

On Jan. 17, with strong encouragement from the United States and the 
United Nations, Afghanistan's interim leader, Hamid Karzai, announced 
a new ban on poppy cultivation. His prohibition went beyond the 
Taliban's decree to include processing and trafficking, which the 
Taliban had tolerated and, to some extent, profited from.

While foreign officials have applauded Karzai's ban, it was issued 
only after the poppies had been planted and without any viable means 
of implementation.

Now, even though the opium was planted relatively late in the season 
and the fields will be affected by a continuing drought, drug control 
officials say the conditions are favorable enough to produce a bumper 
crop.
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