IRAN FIGHTS AFGHAN DRUGS, NOT TERRORISTS

ZAHEDAN, Iran -- The chant for the martyrs lasted until sundown. Muslim
clerics then stopped by each grave to place a lily and pour rose water on
the thirsty soil.

"The hot sands of this province will never forget you," the preacher said
Thursday during a special ceremony for police officers killed in drug wars.
"You lost your lives to wake up humanity to what is happening here."

In the almost surreal borderlands between Iran and Afghanistan --
wind-sculpted outcrops, hungry buzzards, sand and gravel plains that melt
into mirages -- a nasty battle persists over one of the world's main drug
pipelines.

Opium and heroin flow to the West -- and experts say produce vital hard
currency for Afghanistan's ruling Taliban and possibly the terrorist cells
they shelter.

Iran has sought a neutral path since the Sept. 11 attacks -- condemning
terrorism but rejecting any role in a U.S.-led campaign against the Taliban
or Osama bin Laden, the suspected mastermind in the terror assault.

In reality, Iran's front-line fight against drug trafficking has indirectly
targeted the financial underpinnings of the Taliban since the puritanical
Islamic regime took control in 1996.

Whatever the outcome of the West's duel with the Taliban, Iranian officials
say Afghanistan cannot achieve stable and accountable leadership unless the
drug flow is staunched with U.S. and European help.

"Drugs are also a form of terrorism -- a terrorism against societies. We
need real international determination to fight against this black devil ...
We can't do it alone," said Mahdi Morrasaie, head of the anti-drug office
for the Baluchestan province in southeastern Iran.

The Taliban themselves recently have begun enforcing their ban on growing
of opium poppies, slashing production from 3,300 tons in 2000 to 50 tons
this year, according to a U.N. report due out later this month.

Poppy production in the sliver of northern Afghanistan controlled by
anti-Taliban rebels stayed steady, meanwhile -- about 150 tons for 2001,
according to the U.N. report.

The Taliban's ban applies only to production, however. International
officials believe drug trading persists in Taliban-controlled areas from
stockpiled supplies.

The impact of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks already are being felt.

In the past few days, Morrasaie said Iranian patrols have confiscated 1.5
tons of heroin and its raw component, opium. The spike in seizures suggests
what Western drug officials have feared: traffickers emptying storehouses
before a possible military strike and flooding the European market with drugs.

In the first six months of this year, Iranian anti-drug forces seized about
30 tons of drugs along the 600-mile border with Afghanistan, Morrasaie
said. Deep trenches and dam-like barricades on mountain passes also seek to
block the smugglers' convoys.

The traffickers, in return, have relied more on traditional camel caravans
- -- guarded by arsenals that include rocket-propelled grenades and heavy
machine guns loaded with armor piercing rounds.

Iranian forces respond with equally aggressive firepower: Land Rovers
fitted with pivoting machine guns and pickups toting cannons or heavy
mortar batteries. Castle-like bunkers dot the barren border expanse like
lonely sentinels.

More than 3,100 Iranian anti-drug personnel have been killed in the past 20
years -- some beheaded or burned after they were shot.

A senior police official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said forces
recently have been granted "shoot-to-kill" authority without fear of
exhaustive judicial inquiries.

Every Iranian city has murals and billboards remembering those killed in
the 1980-88 war with Iraq. In Zahedan, near the meeting point of Iran,
Pakistan and Afghanistan, the images include police officers lost in the
drug fight. Posters cite anti-drug messages from the Quran and the late
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, leader of Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution.

"We have been fighting so many years against the drugs from Afghanistan,"
said Mohsen Mehr-Alizadeh, the governor of the northeastern border province
of Khorasan. "We would like to see a different face from our neighbor."

Afghanistan's drug trade is deeply entrenched across the nation's patchwork
of tribes and clans.

The Taliban, comprising the main Pashtun ethnic group, charge a tax on drug
transport and cultivation of opium poppies and netted nearly $10 million
last year, according to U.N. officials.

Then the Taliban's leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, issued his religious
decree banning poppy growing. The main effect was to help send the price of
opium and heroin skyrocketing. It put no real dent in immediate supply.

U.N. officials and others believe the drug profits also may help bankroll
terrorist networks linked to bin Laden and his al-Qaida network. Asa
Hutchinson, head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, said in
Washington there's "obviously the potential for a stronger connection"
between the Taliban and terrorist groups by possibly sharing drug profits.

"There is little doubt that the Taliban and those it helps, such as bin
Laden and his followers, are beneficiaries of the drug trade," said Dawoud
Hermidas- Bavand, a Tehran University expert on Afghanistan affairs.

He wondered whether the possible fall of the Taliban will cause any
disruption to the drug flow.

"You would need a central government able to control the entire country,"
he said. "This is a very difficult task in country like Afghanistan."