AFGHAN OPIUM DEALERS PROTEST RAIDS

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.

But it went badly wrong.

The soldiers appeared more like a thieving party, ripping the watches off
the wrists of store owners, pulling money from their pockets and taking
everything in the shops - as well as the opium, shopkeepers said.

"They weren't interested in destroying our opium. They took our opium to
sell," said Javed Khan, a store owner. "They were just thieves."

"Look! They just grabbed my watch from my wrist," said Mohammed Nabi. "They
ordered us to sit down and then just took everything."

Now residents of Ghani Khiel, 36 miles east of the provincial capital of
Jalalabad, are fighting mad - and heavily armed.

"We're ready to shed blood over this," Khan said.

On Friday, a rocket launcher was pointed toward the village entrance.
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.

Negotiations won't be easy. Fifty residents are in jail and the entire
village is up in arms.

The elders, swathed in voluminous turbans, sat in a stark white cement
building in Ghani Khiel. Outside, their bodyguards brandished rocket
launchers and Kalashnikov assault rifles, and railed against Haji Abdul
Qadir, the interim regime's governor of the eastern province of Nangarhar.

When the opium market flourished, shopkeepers in Ghani Khiel had a routine.
They sat in their dusty courtyards on rope beds, sipping tea and waiting
for customers.

On Friday, they gathered as usual, but their shops were shuttered and their
mutterings were filled with anger.

They accused Qadir of sending soldiers into Ghani Kiel because most
residents are loyal to a rival warlord, Haji Zaman Khan. Since the collapse
of the Taliban last year, Afghanistan has disintegrated into areas
controlled by warlords and their heavily armed men.

Outside the capital, Kabul, the interim regime's rule is weak.

At the entrance to Ghani Khiel, a graffiti-scarred board put up by the
deposed Taliban still sits slightly lopsided. It reads: "Drug abuse is the
greatest evil of our society. Let us save our lives, save our children's
lives."

But inside Ghani Khiel's opium market, store owners say they aren't ready
to change.

"When they give us roads, schools, hospitals and something that brings us
as much money, we will stop selling it," said Gul Ahmed Shah, a store owner
whose long gray beard was shaggy and unkempt. Other shopkeepers agreed,
speaking at once, interrupting each other, each in turn complaining about
the woeful state of their economy.

"We have nothing to feed our children with," said Qari Saddar.

"Who is going to pay our bills? This government?" Mohammed Naurang asked.

"They can't even bring law and order. There is no security. There is
nothing here but opium," said Zamaryar Mahmood.

The vendors say they sell to buyers from Turkey, Iran and Pakistan.

In Afghanistan's poppy heyday - only two years ago - farmers were producing
4,000 tons - the world's largest harvest - and selling it for only $11.35 a
pound.

Last year the Taliban banned poppy growing, and the price soared to $360 a
pound.

But with the collapse of the Taliban, some farmers tore up their wheat
crops to plant poppies, which produce the opium from which heroin is
manufactured. Now opium is selling for $55 a pound.

Interim Prime Minister Hamid Karzai also banned poppies, but so far most
farmers have ignored the order. Karzai's government has offered money to
farmers to destroy their crops.

But it's not enough. The government pays about $350 an acre, while poppies
give farmers more than $2,000 per acre.

The U.N. Drug Control Program warned it could take a decade to end poppy
produ ction in Afghanistan.

Its approach - and that of the government - will be more humane than the
Taliban's, involving building roads and schools and creating jobs in an
attempt to discourage poppy growing, officials say.

But Khan, the shopkeeper, said the interim government has to first deal
with a credibility problem. No one believed the opium the soldiers took
would be destroyed.

"You tell them, 'If it is the opium they wanted to destroy, then tell them
to bring it right here and burn it in front of us,"' Khan said. "Then we
will talk about the next step."