OPIUM A TOOL FOR TALIBAN

Heroin: The radical regime, armed through drug profits, plans to lift its
ban on poppy-growing if the U.S. attacks.

QUETTA, Pakistan - Down the road from St. Francis Grammar School, beneath
the Jinna Road Bridge, where stray dogs curl up beside the stench of an
open sewer, the heroin addicts of Quetta come to get high.

Their shadowy home is in Pakistan. But the source of their drugs is
neighboring Afghanistan, whose poppy fields supply more than 70 percent of
the world's opium and heroin. And the short trip across Afghanistan's
porous 1,500-mile border makes heroin available here for less than $1.25 a
gram to glassy-eyed addicts like 65-year-old Noor Shah.

"If we don't smoke, we are like dead bodies," said Shah, a one-eyed man
dressed in rags who lives like a troll beneath the bridge. "We can't do
anything. We cannot move. A life of a dog is better than this life." He
said he has been using heroin for 45 years.

The drug habit has helped arm Afghanistan's Taliban regime. Profits from
the drug trade are directly linked to the Taliban, who control the land
where poppies are grown and promote cultivation to finance their military,
according to the most recent U.S. State Department narcotics control
report. The Taliban levy a 10 percent tax on opium sales, even issuing
receipts to drug dealers, officials say.

"The arms the Taliban are buying today are paid for with the lives of young
British people buying their drugs on British streets," British Prime
Minister Tony Blair said in a speech last week. "That is another part of
their regime that we should seek to destroy."

Asa Hutchinson, head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, went one
step further last week by connecting drugs, Osama bin Laden and the Taliban
regime that allows him to live in Afghanistan as a "guest." Although there
is no direct evidence linking bin Laden to the drug trade, Hutchinson said,
"the relationship between the Taliban and bin Laden is believed to have
flourished in large part due to the Taliban's substantial reliance on the
opium trade as a source of organizational revenue."

The Taliban, however, banned poppy cultivation last year. The move drove up
the cost of opium to $400 a kilo from $44 as the government destroyed poppy
fields and farmers turned to other crops. Afghanistan has produced about 74
metric tons of opium so far this year, according to the Drug Enforcement
Administration, down from the 3,656 metric tons it produced last year. But
there has been no drop in availability of opium and related drugs, leading
drug officials to believe that Afghanistan maintains drug stockpiles that
continue to benefit the Taliban.

The Taliban plan to lift the ban if the United States conducts retaliatory
strikes against it, according to reports coming from Afghanistan. Drug
officials are concerned that Afghan drug lords are dumping their stockpiles
on the world market to generate as much money as they can before possible
U.S. strikes. Such a move will likely drive down the cost of heroin -
making the drug more easily available to addicts and new users.

Afghanistan's drug trade, however, cannot be blamed entirely on the
Taliban. Long before the Islamic government rose to power in 1996, opium
was an established source of income for Afghans trying to scratch out a
living during two chaotic decades of war, drought and oppression. And the
rebel Northern Alliance also participates in the opium trade, authorities say.

The profits from poppies discourage farmers from planting the wheat that
Afghanistan needs to feed itself. There is, for example, the case of Abdul
Ahmad, 28, a farmer from Helmand, Afghanistan, who explains the troubling
arithmetic of poppies:

If he grew poppies on his farm in Helmand, he and his six children would
earn about 400,000 rupees, about $6,000 a year, for their effort. If he
plants wheat, as he did last year after the Taliban's ban on poppy
production, he earns half that, about $3,000.

"What are Afghans to do? There is no way of earning money," Ahmad said
during an interview at the Milo Shaheed Trust drug rehabilitation clinic in
Quetta. "We were fighting Russians and we were fighting among each other.
This was a good way to earn money. I have to feed my family."

Ahmad checked himself into the treatment center last month to break a
decade-old opium addiction. He intends to return soon to Afghanistan, where
he will decide on next season's crop. News that the Taliban will lift the
ban on opium if the United States attacks makes the decision easy, he said.
It will be opium again. This time he won't use his crop personally, he
said, but he has no qualms about selling it to the outside world.

"We know what we are doing is bad for humanity, but we are dying. No one
cares about us. Why should we care about others?" he asked. "We are dying.
We are starving. So if we are starving, let them all starve."

Indeed, Afghanistan's drug trade has had a severe impact beyond its
borders, creating a culture of drug lords, money laundering, violence,
corruption, crime and the rapid spread of addiction in refugee populations.

Afghanistan and its neighbors - Pakistan, Iran, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan
and Uzbekistan - and other states in Central Asia and the Persian Gulf are
believed to consume about half of all drugs produced in Afghanistan. At
least 5 percent - about 1 metric ton - of heroin imported into the United
States yearly originates in Afghanistan, according to U.S. seizure data.

In Pakistan, the promise of drug riches draws people of all walks of life.
Among those on trial on drug trafficking charges are a former member of
Pakistan's National Assembly, the owner of an English language daily and an
influential politician.

Here in Quetta, about 85 miles from the Afghan border, the drug trade has a
daily impact on residents' lives. Addicts are said to number in the
thousands, and their need to buy heroin and other drugs has increased
thefts and killings, authorities say.

Tons of heroin and other drugs enter Pakistan in the remote desert and
mountains outside Quetta, where anti-narcotics forces and drug smugglers
play violent games of cat and mouse. Smugglers cross the mountains into
Pakistan by night, moving swiftly in three-or four-car convoys armed with
automatic weapons, surface-to-air missiles and rocket launchers.

"They never give up without a fight," said Lt. Col. Abdur Rashid Khan,
director general of the Baluchistan Anti-Narcotics Force. "They go all out
to escape the ambush. But most of the time we are successful."

Khan clicked through his unit's successes: In 1999, his men captured 23
metric tons of drugs. Last year, they intercepted 27 metric tons. This
year, they have captured 13 metric tons. And in the past three years, the
courts have prosecuted 158 drug cases, 55 percent of them resulting in life
sentences.

Khan estimated that Pakistan's anti-narcotics forces capture about half of
the drugs smuggled across Afghanistan's border.

Some of the heroin, no doubt, will find its way beneath Jinna Road Bridge
in Quetta, where there are plenty of loyal customers.

"Sure, I want to leave this habit. It is very bad. I would love to leave
it. But I can't do it now," said Kamal Mustafa, 45, who begged a visitor
for rupees.

"If you don't smoke it, it is like taking a fish out of water," Shah said.
"And if a fish is out of water, it cannot live."