IRAN DENOUNCES AFGHAN DRUGS

ZAHEDAN, Iran (AP) -- 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 following 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.

But 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 have recently 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,
said Morrasaie. Deep trenches and dam-like barricades on mountain
passes also seek to block the smugglers' vehicle 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 have recently 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. But 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."

But 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. And it put no real dent in
immediate supply.

U.N. officials and others believe the drug profits may also 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.

But he wondered if 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."