Pubdate: Sat, 27 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
Webpage: 
www.newlondonday.com/news/ts-re.asp?NewsUID=FE02EF02-D534-499D-8E57-CF7146122981

ANGRY OPIUM DEALERS PROTEST RAID ON SHOPS

Ghani Khiel, Afghanistan -- Soldiers stormed in by the hundreds, smashed 
the bolted wooden doors of ramshackle shops and seized more than six tons 
of opium at Afghanistan's biggest drug market. The raid this week was the 
largest show of the interim government's resolve to wipe out the lucrative 
opium trade that resumed with the fall of the Taliban. Now residents of 
Ghani Khiel, 36 miles east of the provincial capital of Jalalabad, are 
fighting mad -- and heavily armed. On Friday residents warned they were 
ready to do battle with the government if a settlement is not brokered by 
their elders, who were meeting to find a way out of the impasse. But 
negotiations won't be easy -- 50 residents are in jail and the entire 
village is up in arms. The U.N. Drug Control Program, meanwhile, warned 
that it could take a decade to end poppy production in Afghanistan.
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