Pubdate: Tue, 02 Apr 2002
Source: Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)
Copyright: 2002 The Sydney Morning Herald
Contact:  http://www.smh.com.au/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/441)
Author: New York Times

US TRIES NEW STRATEGY IN OPIUM WAR

Hopes of making big cuts in Afghanistan's opium production this year have 
been abandoned and officials in Europe and the United States are bracing 
for a harvest large enough to inundate the world's heroin and opium markets 
with cheap drugs.

While the officials have considered measures such as paying Afghan opium 
poppy farmers to plough up their fields, they have concluded that 
continuing lawlessness and political instability make such a scheme all but 
impossible.

Instead, US officials say, they will try a less ambitious strategy: getting 
Afghan leaders to conduct a modest eradication program as opium poppies are 
harvested over the next two months.

This is intended 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 neighbouring countries. The 
campaign is to some extent led by Britain, which traces nearly all the 
heroin on its streets to Afghanistan.

Until the Taliban banned the cultivation of opium poppies in its last year 
in power, Afghanistan produced as much as three quarters of the world's 
supply, and taxes on the drug trade were an important source of revenue.

Now, the profits that 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.

So long as the drug trade flourishes, law enforcement officials say, it 
will fuel political rivalries, foster corruption and undermine the 
authority of the central Government.

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

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