WHY AFGHANISTAN'S POPPY FIELDS CONTINUE TO FLOURISH

A Ban On Opium Production Has Done Little To Stop The Trade In Illegal Drugs

Haji Laly used to till golden wheat fields far larger than the 80 scorched
and cracked hectares now under his care. But while his crop may be much
smaller today, the wispy pink flowers are maturing into green bulbs that
carry the promise of lucrative payback.

"You know," the 48-year-old farmer says, "Russia was the bane of our
existence. They came, they attacked, they destroyed our fields. Russia
planted our fields with mines, so we had little plots. So we were compelled
to grow poppy."

The former Soviet Union's 10-year occupation of Afghanistan transformed Mr.
Laly, like the majority of farmers here, from a contributor to his
country's breadbasket to the first link in the international chain of
heroin trafficking. This month, the brown paste from the poppies now being
harvested across Afghanistan in fields such as his will be manufactured
into high-grade heroin destined for the streets of Istanbul, Hamburg,
Amsterdam and Moscow. Mr. Laly savours the sweet irony of helping create a
generation of drug addicts in the capital from where invading soldiers were
dispatched in the 1980s to wreak havoc on his country.

"We are going to kill this enemy," he says.

Six months after its liberation from the Taliban, Afghanistan still clings
to its status as the world's leading supplier of heroin. The Taliban may
have fallen, and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist network may be on the
run, but the illicit industry that was Mr. bin Laden's No. 1 source of
income remains untouched.

Military officials here don't believe al-Qaeda continues to profit from the
poppy, but it is difficult to be certain because much of the Afghan opium
trade has been pushed underground in recent months. Local warlords, many of
whom are jockeying for position for next month's loya jirga, or grand
council, to select a new government, are believed to be the beneficiaries
of drug money.

One fact is incontrovertible. No one -- local authorities, the
international armies stationed here, foreign aid agencies -- has been able
to stop the trafficking.

Afghanistan's interim government cannot enforce its poppy ban because the
crop offers farmers their only relief from grinding poverty. The U.S.-led
military machine is preoccupied with rooting out al-Qaeda terrorists, and
has little interest in making new enemies among farmer by torching their
poppy fields. Humanitarian agencies can barely get a handle on the extent
of the poppy problem, let alone take the first baby steps towards combating it.

Mr. Laly motions towards an Afghan army checkpoint, barely visible on the
road across the horizon about a kilometre away from his field of poppies.
"They don't come and ask why we are growing," he says. "We still don't know
why they haven't banned us."

The UN estimates up to 65,000 hectares in eastern and southern Afghanistan
are tilled with opium poppies that could yield up to 2,700 tonnes of opium
by August. In the 1990s, Afghanistan grew to be the supplier of 70 per cent
of the world's heroin, moving up to 5,000 tonnes per year at the peak of
productivity. About 90 per cent of Afghan heroin goes to Europe and Russia.

Paul L. Williams, author of Al-Qaeda: Brotherhood of Terror, says heroin
trafficking was the top source of al-Qaeda revenue, a bigger cash generator
than the international fundraising network of 150 Islamist organizations,
and donations from sympathetic and rich Muslim extremists.

"The money comes from heroin, not from (Mr. bin Laden's father's) personal
holdings," former bin Laden associate Ali Abul Nazzar told the FBI last
year, several months before the Sept. 11 attacks. "The media keep writing
about the emir's construction companies, his currency trading firms and the
Themar al-Mirbaraka Company that grows sesame and white corn. They want
people to believe that al-Qaeda is dependent on sesame seeds ... Of course,
this is ridiculous."

Mr. bin Laden arrived in Afghanistan several months before the Taliban
seized control of the country in 1996. In the six years he propped up the
Taliban, he netted as much as $1 billion annually trafficking in heroin,
money he used to underwrite the expansion of his international terrorist
network. United Nations groups are satisfied a link existed between the
Taliban and al-Qaeda drug trafficking.

Worldwide pressure forced the Taliban to ban poppy production two years
ago. Mr. bin Laden's profits still soared. Low supply inflated the cost of
heroin almost 10 times between February 2000 and February 2002 from $30 per
kilogram to $400 a kilogram, according to UN figures. Many suspect Mr. bin
Laden also had a secret heroin stockpile that he simultaneously unleashed
onto the international market, further fattening his revenues.

When the Taliban regime finally collapsed late last year, farmers scurried
to take advantage of the power vacuum to plant fresh poppies. By the time
the interim government of Hamid Karzai officially banned poppies in
mid-January, it was already too late. The seeds of this year's harvest had
already been sown.

Mr. Laly is pleased his poppy field brings pain and misery to Russians a
decade after they withdrew in disgrace from his country. But that's simply
a fringe benefit. Like all Afghan poppy farmers, he grows opium because his
family would starve if he chose to raise a less-lethal crop.

"We are compelled to grow the poppy because I have a big family to feed,"
says the father of eight boys and seven girls. "Only poppy can make money."

Mr. Laly has done the math. It would cost him $2,150 to plant wheat, which
he says he could sell for $1,345 -- a net loss of $805. His poppy field
cost him $4,835 to seed, money loaned to him by "rich people," he says. He
expects to earn $8,060 selling raw opium to the dealers in the Kandahar
drug bazaar after this year's harvest. Afterwards, his crop will be
smuggled into neighbouring Iran or Pakistan, where it will be refined and
sold on the streets of western European countries and Russia.

"We are not responsible for the people who are addicted to heroin. They
must cure themselves," Mr. Laly says. "It is the only way we are getting
money."

Afghanistan's farmers have, in recent history, demonstrated the ability to
feed their population. That changed in December, 1979 with the arrival of
invading troops from the Soviet Union. A tall grain elevator on the highway
leading to Mr. Laly's farm, its top sheared off by a Soviet rocket, stands
as a reminder of the occupation.

Drug cultivation was a byproduct of the Soviet invasion. Heroin helped fund
the mujahedeen resistance that eventually repelled the foreign invaders.
Farmers also sold heroin and hashish to occupying Soviet soldiers to dull
their wits and diminish their already-dwindling will to fight.

In recent years, drought has ravaged Afghanistan, pushing farmers to the
breaking point. Only poppies, with their high rate of return, are worth
growing in the harsh, dry climate.

"It's hard work for us to grow this poppy. We have to spend a lot of time
in this field," Mr. Laly says, while a labourer carves a small irrigation
trench in the cracked mud.

He knows heroin is a dangerous drug that holds no benefit to users. "This
is injurious towards health," he says, "so I advise my children, my sons,
my neighbours not to smoke or eat. I know this is poison."

Twenty-one-year-old Ganan, Mr. Laly's oldest son, has no sympathy for those
of his generation in western countries who are addicted to heroin because
of his family's efforts.

"This is not our responsibility. I could say it is bad thing that we are
doing. But there is no other way. We are poor. It is killing us."

For the officers who work under Jamal Shah, the head of the Kandahar police
department's drug squad, a visit to a poppy farm is their least favourite
and most potentially dangerous assignment. So now, they don't even bother.

"It is too difficult for our organization," Mr. Shah explains one morning
while half a dozen men loiter in his office. "If you go there and tell a
farmer we are going to kill your poppy, the response is anger. Their
children are crying. They have nothing to eat. What should we do? We have
no answer."

Asked what his squad has been up to lately, Mr. Shah proudly says they
recently confiscated 450 kilograms of hashish.

He has no idea how many hectares of poppies are being grown in and around
Kandahar. All he knows is that the seemingly endless drought in this region
has created a lot of starving farmers, struggling to feed their families.

He sees no end to poppy farming unless his government takes a more active
role. But he also believes Afghanistan needs the help of the international
community to tackle the problem.

"If the government provides seed or other kinds of facilities for
irrigation, that would be better," he says. "If the UN or other foreign
NGOs could help farmers, that would be very good."

For now, Afghanistan's provisional government seems ill-equipped to deal
with the problem. It has offered to buy out the fields of poppy farmers,
but the rate they are offering is only a fraction of its value to drug
traffickers. Earlier this month, the government said it had confiscated
about $8 million worth of heroin, but it couldn't say how many hectares had
been destroyed. Interior Minister Yunus Qanooni promised that Afghanistan
was on the verge of a poppy-free environment, a claim that now seems ludicrous.

Falal Mohammad Fazli, the Kandahar liaison with the United Nations Office
for Drug Control, says the government's attempts to buy out poppy fields
are doomed to fail. He says the international community must include the
eradication of poppy farming as a central feature of their strategy to
rebuild Afghanistan. So far, he says, no one aid group has stepped forward
to take the lead.

He recommends a series of remedial steps. These include loans of cash and
heavy equipment to farmers, as well as creative new ways to handle
irrigation and fertilization to compete with the harsh growing conditions.

"People have no money, no seed -- no nothing -- to grow anything else," he
says. "They should be supported by the international community. It is an
international problem. Afghanistan cannot solve this problem alone."

Capt. Phil Nicholson was awestruck by the vast fields of poppies he and his
fellow Canadian soldiers found high in the Tora Bora mountain range of
eastern Afghanistan earlier this month. He was quietly impressed by the
sophisticated level of irrigation that had allowed the plants to thrive.

The inhabitants of the Tora Bora region had been al-Qaeda sympathizers in
previous months, when their mountainous community was home to the
terrorists. When the troops from Princess Patricia's Canadian Light
Infantry arrived, they got along fine with them too -- as soon as the
Canadian soldiers made it clear they weren't interested in interfering with
their poppy cultivation.

"We weren't there to tackle the poppy problem," Capt. Nicholson says.

"The solution is to target the processing labs and smugglers while not
punishing the farmers," says Capt. Nicholson. "I'm not encouraging the
farmers to grow poppies, but attacking the farmer is not necessarily the
way to go."

Lt.-Col. Pat Stogran, the commander of Canadian troops in Afghanistan, says
he could not have ordered the destruction of the poppy fields near Tora
Bora even if he thought that was a good idea, which he does not. The
Canadian military's rules of engagement do not give him the authority to
arbitrarily order the destruction of what is still Afghan property, he says.

"For some farmers, it is the only way to feed their families. We will
likely lose their support in the war against terrorism if we don't offer
them an alternative means of supporting themselves," Lt.-Col. Stogran says.
"This is not something you walk into without a detailed course of action."

One week later, Mr. Laly's poppy field on the western edge of Kandahar is
giving up its booty. The pink flowers have all but disappeared. Green bulbs
flutter at the end of slender stems.

"For the last three days, we have been cutting," says Lal Jan, 35, one of a
handful of labourers working the field under a hot, midday sun. "The liquid
is coming."

Each evening, labourers fan out to slit poppy bulbs with a specially
designed metal implement that scars their outer layer with what looks like
tiny tire treads. This allows the sticky brown gum, which resembles maple
syrup, to ooze through and harden. Each morning, Mr. Jan and his fellow
workers return to the fields to scrape off and collect the crystallized gum.

This is step one in the manufacture of heroin.

Dealers will do the rest. They will truck it across the surrounding
deserts, west to Iran, south to Pakistan. Eventually, it will arrive in
Europe after it has been refined into a high-grade powder that can be
heated and injected directly into the bloodstream.

Seven months from now, Mr. Laly will be in a position to start the cycle
all over again. "We have plenty," he says. "The seed is very cheap."

He has a stockpile of between 50 and 60 kilograms of poppy seed. He needed
only five kilograms to seed the 80 hectares he is now harvesting. At that
rate, he will be able to raise fields of opium poppies for the next 10 years.