DRUG TRADE RESURGENT IN AFGHANISTAN

Opium and Heroin Flood Into Pakistan, Complicating Anti-Terrorism Efforts

As the United States wages war on terrorism in Afghanistan, concern is
mounting about an unintended casualty: America's war on drugs.

Heroin and opium are believed to be flooding into Pakistan and soon could
be coming to the West. Wholesale heroin prices are dropping. Afghan
farmers, after a year's hiatus, are preparing their fields for a winter
crop of opium poppies. And as the United States and Pakistan seek tribal
leaders who would be willing to turn against Afghanistan's ruling Taliban
movement, some candidates have been involved in the drug trade for decades.

"Things were looking good for a while," said Abdul Malik, the chief
psychiatrist in Quetta's main hospital and director of heroin treatment for
the Pakistani province of Baluchistan. "But with this war, it is going to
get a lot worse for everybody -- us and the West. The only people who will
profit are the traffickers."

And possibly terrorists.

Bernard Frahi, the U.N. Drug Control Program representative for Pakistan
and Afghanistan, warned in an interview that a resurgent heroin trade could
hamper the West's war on terrorism.

"Before this war, Osama had enough money," Frahi said, referring to
suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden, who is being harbored in Afghanistan
by the Taliban. "Now his bank accounts are frozen. What is he going to do?
Turn rapidly to drug trafficking through networks that exist already."

In Washington, State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said the possible
resurgence of the Afghan drug trade "is something that concerns us, and it
is a way that the Taliban has found funding for their regime -- which, of
course, supports [bin Laden's] al Qaeda network."

For years, Afghanistan produced more opium than any other country --
accounting for more than three-quarters of the world supply in 1999,
according to the United Nations. Last year, a Taliban-imposed ban on opium
poppy growing, along with a three-year drought, slashed the country's
output -- though not its stockpiles -- and some analysts voiced optimism
that the problem was beginning to abate.

But in the days after the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, a flood of
opium and heroin moved out of Afghan warehouses into Pakistan, mostly
through this border region, anti-narcotics officials and traders say.

Small dealers dumped their product on the market, both in Quetta and in
Karachi, Abdul Malik said. Today, the wholesale price for a kilogram (2.2
pounds) of heroin in Karachi, one of the world centers of the heroin trade,
is one-third of the $4,800 it cost before Sept. 11, a Pakistani narcotics
officer said.

Pakistani government sources predicted that tons of heroin would begin to
flow from Karachi's port to Western Europe and the United States once the
war ends and security in the region loosens.

"Whatever they have, they would like to cash out -- or move out of --
Afghanistan," said Brig. Liaquat Ali Toor, the head of the army-run
Anti-Narcotics Force in the areas bordering Afghanistan. "But right now, no
one dares to move the goods around too much. There is heightened security
everywhere. After the security relaxes, we will have a lot of work to do."

In addition, following the breakdown of law and order caused by U.S.
attacks, Afghan farmers in several provinces are preparing their fields for
a new poppy crop, analysts say.

Frahi said he had received reports from Nangarhar and Kandahar provinces
that peasants were preparing their fields for poppies as opposed to wheat.
The telltale signs, he said, involve a special kind of tilling. The earth
is not plowed flat; rather, it is tilled so it rises and falls in small
hills and valleys.

"Last year at this time, no one was cultivating poppies. Now it's a bad
sign," Frahi said. "We can't ignore drugs because of terrorism. They are
intertwined."

And as the United States and Pakistan search for Afghan allies against the
Taliban, they are negotiating with exiles, local commanders and tribal
leaders who for decades used heroin to keep their followers rich, buy
weapons and ensure their hold on power. Last year, the only place where
opium production increased, according to the United Nations, was an area
held by the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, Badakhshan province.

"Dealing with these bandits is a mistake," said Gul Afgha, a former local
leader in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar. "Drugs again will flow from
Afghanistan to the West."

Poppies and Afghanistan have a long association that dates back centuries.
Farmers have been growing poppies since the time of the British Empire.

The first major wave of opium production occurred during the fight against
the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. Drug money played an
important role in funding the war and in enriching guerrilla factions.

The second wave started after 1996 when the Taliban seized power. It used
taxes and tariffs levied on opium production as a major source of cash --
an estimated $40 million to $50 million a year, Western and Pakistani
officials said.

Opium poppy cultivation increased dramatically when the Taliban came to
power, rising from 52 percent of the world's total in 1996 to a high of 79
percent in 1999 -- 4,581 metric tons, according to the United Nations.

In a significant twist that meant greater profits, traffickers inside the
country also began manufacturing heroin for the first time. Now roughly 95
percent of all heroin reaching Europe comes from Afghanistan. The U.S.
government reports that only 5 percent of heroin entering the United States
comes from Afghanistan; Colombia is the country's largest heroin supplier.

Pakistani officials said that last year drug traffickers in
Taliban-controlled areas in Kandahar, Helmand and Nangarhar provinces were
authorized to turn the 2000 opium poppy harvest into heroin and morphine base.

"Afghanistan produced about 500 metric tons of heroin last year --
sufficient for three years of global demand -- and cornered the world
heroin market for the next several years," said a senior official in the
intelligence wing of the Anti-Narcotics Force.

Under intense international pressure, in June 2000, Taliban leader Mohammad
Omar banned poppy cultivation, declaring that it violated the teachings of
the Koran. The next year, poppy cultivation in Afghanistan plummeted to 185
tons, according to a newly released U.N. report. The United States, saying
it welcomed the ban, in May announced a $43 million grant to help Afghan
farmers.

But the ban was not popular at home.

"Farmers cursed the government because they felt they had lost a means to
livelihood," said Abdul Malik, the psychiatrist. "Wheat certainly wouldn't
have provided that kind of money."

And abroad, Omar's ban has come under scrutiny in recent months with some
law enforcement officials saying it appeared to be more of a marketing
strategy than a law enforcement move.

Abdul Malik said that after the ban and well into this year, his sources
reported opium and opium-related drugs continued to be sold in Kandahar's
covered bazaar. "He banned cultivation and its use in Afghanistan," he said
of Omar. "But he did not ban the trade."

Mohammed Atta is a 22-year-old who lives under a bridge by a fetid creek in
Quetta. He has been doing heroin, or "chasing the dragon," as he put it in
his excellent English, for six years.

Dressed in rags, he stumbled toward a foreigner one recent afternoon,
begging for a handout so he could have another fix. Atta said he too
expects prices to fall and supplies to rise.

"This is a good thing," he said, trembling slightly as he bent a blackened
finger toward a visitor. "The new stuff will be cheaper and purer. It will
be a better high."

Staff writer Peter Slevin in Washington and special correspondent Kamran
Khan in Karachi contributed to this report.