OPIUM

A battle over drugs looms in Afghanistan

Beyond terrorists and the tyrannical Taliban, the free world has another
enemy growing in Afghanistan: heroin.

Afghanistan is the world's largest producer of the opium from which heroin
is derived, supplying an estimated 75 percent of the world's crop in 1999.
Drug experts say it is not the highest grade opium, but it produces a
heroin that is suitable for smoking -- which is how most Western addicts
are introduced to the drug.

Published reports say that, anticipating a war with the United States,
Afghan leaders in the opium trade were preparing to dump 3,000 tons of
opium stock -- enough to make 300 tons of heroin -- on the drug market.
Their motivation could be multifold: making a profit while they still can,
raising money for arms, and contributing to the toll that drug addiction
takes on the Western world.

In late 2000, Afghanistan's ruling Taliban banned the cultivation of opium
poppies as an affront to Islam. Grateful Western nations pledged to aid
Afghan farmers who were ruined by the ban. British officials estimate that
90 percent of the heroin sold in Britain originates in Afghanistan.

But the ban has since been lifted, and the opium is said to be moving west
via Tajikistan. In 1994, authorities confiscated 572 pounds of opium and
heroin at the Tajikistan border; through August of 2001, they had seized
4.8 tons.

As Afghanistan becomes a war zone, some observers expect drug traffickers
- -- who also operate within the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance -- to use the
chaos as cover to move even more of the crop.

That's another battle to be waged for the free world's future.