Pubdate: Sun, 21 Apr 2002
Source: New London Day (CT)
Copyright: 2002 The Day Publishing Co.
Contact:  http://www.newlondonday.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/293
Author: The Boston Globe

AFGHANS SAY OPIUM SUPPLY BEING REDUCED

Kabul, Afghanistan -- Ten days into its ambitious program to cut off 
supplies of opium, the interim government announced Saturday that it had 
destroyed poppy fields that might produce more than 100 tons of the drug, 
with a European street value of $600 million.

In the first week of eradication in the country's two largest poppy-growing 
provinces, Helmand and Nangahar, authorities used tractors and sticks to 
destroy just over 5,000 acres of poppies, and paid farmers almost $3 
million in compensation, said Ashraf Ghani, chief adviser to interim leader 
Hamid Karzai.

While the street value of the destroyed crop may sound high, it represents 
a small fraction of this year's predicted opium harvest. With estimates of 
more than 160,000 acres of poppies planted last fall, Afghan farmers 
expected to turn the crop into more than 3,000 tons of opium this year, 
according to surveys by the UN Drug Control Program and the Afghan government.

Ghani said eradication would expand to four other poppy-growing provinces 
and would finish in three weeks. "We are in a race against time," he said, 
acknowledging that harvesting has begun in some places.

If destruction continues at the current pace, only 14 percent of the poppy 
crop will be eliminated -- and Afghanistan could still be the world's 
largest supplier of opium this year.

"We will not have time to effect complete eradication," Ghani said. He 
asserted that "a significant change in attitudes has occured." Some 
voluntary eradication has begun, he said, adding that authorities have 
gotten promises from farmers not to grow poppies again next year.

In the 1990s, Afghanistan became the world's main producer of opium, the 
narcotic from which heroin is derived, until a strict ban on poppy 
cultivation by the Taliban in 2000 reduced last year's harvest to almost 
zero. But when the Taliban's days appeared numbered during the US-led war 
last fall, farmers replanted poppies, before a ban issued by the new 
government on Jan. 17.

Ghani denied allegations made by farmers in Helmand Province that Karzai 
(who secretly entered neighboring Uruzgan Province last October to drum up 
anti-Taliban forces) had promised to let farmers plant poppies if they 
helped him topple the hard-line Islamist regime. Ghani said that he had met 
recently with 400 Helmand farmers, and that "not a single person raised 
this issue."

The eradication program appears to be going more smoothly than early signs 
had suggested. Two weeks ago in Helmand, police killed eight farmers and 
wounded dozens who had been protesting the program. In Nangahar, farmers 
blocked roads and pelted vehicles with stones.
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