MOST AFGHAN OPIUM GROWN IN REBEL-CONTROLLED AREAS

New data collected by the United Nations indicates that
most opium grown in Afghanistan this year was in areas controlled by
the Northern Alliance, a rebel group now being courted by the United
States and its Western allies as a means to destabilizing and even
toppling the ruling Taliban. The United Nations study confirmed
earlier findings by United Nations officials and United States
narcotics experts that opium harvests in areas controlled by the
Taliban - said by the United Nations to be about 90 percent of
Afghanistan - have plummeted after a recent Taliban ban on the
growing of opium poppies.

Opium is used to produce heroin and other narcotics. The new data,
which United Nations officials expect to issue shortly, is coming to
light as government officials in the United States and Europe have
emphasized the role of the Taliban in purveying Afghan opium and
heroin. Yesterday, for example, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain,
in a paper that fixed responsibility for last month's terrorist
attacks on the network headed by Osama bin Laden, noted that both Mr.
bin Laden and the Taliban "jointly exploited the drugs trade." United
Nations narcotics experts have estimated that the Taliban have earned
$10 million to $30 million a year from taxes levied on opium growers,
while United States government officials more recently gave higher
estimates of $40 million to $50 million.

The extent of Northern Alliance earnings from opium cultivation is not
clear, the United Nations experts said. "There are no white hats over
there," said an American official familiar with the Afghan heroin
trade, commenting on the broad involvement in narcotics trafficking in
the region as a whole. "If the U.S. tries to find someone whose hands
are completely free on this they are going to have to go thousands of
miles." The new data was assembled by the United Nations Office for
Drug Control and Crime Prevention in Vienna. In a telephone interview
yesterday, Pino Arlacchi, the office's director, said that production
of opium poppies in Afghanistan, a country that until recently had
accounted for 71 percent of the world's supply, had plummeted by 91
percent this year. Mr. Arlacchi said areas controlled by the Taliban
accounted for virtually all those changes.

By contrast, he said that opium production in those areas controlled
by the Northern Alliance had continued largely unchanged. The Northern
Alliance controls a small part of northeastern Afghanistan along the
border with Tajikistan, which is a major corridor for trafficking
drugs that eventually end up in Western Europe. That production,
however, still represents a small fraction of previous Afghan levels.
Two American officials said government information confirmed the
drastic cuts in opium growing in Taliban-controlled areas.

But in separate interviews, they cautioned that the Taliban had large
stockpiles of opium and heroin from record harvests in the years
before the ban on cultivation. "I don't believe that the trade in
opium has dropped over there," said one of the officials. "While the
Taliban eliminated the plants, we saw no indication that they
eliminated the market." About 10 percent of Afghan heroin makes its
way to this country.

The remainder is sold in Europe, Russia and the former Soviet
republics. For its part, Britain has been extremely hard hit and Mr.
Blair, in a speech this week, accused the Taliban of controlling the
"biggest drugs hoards" in the world. Asked to comment yesterday on the
United Nations data, a spokesman for Mr. Blair's office estimated that
90 percent of the heroin sold on British streets came from
Afghanistan. "We are determined to stem the flow of these drugs into
the U.K., working with our international partners to stamp this out,"
the spokesman said. Mr. Arlacchi said that Ahmed Shah Massoud, the
former leader of the Northern Alliance, had discussed his interest in
curbing the opium trade.

But Mr. Massoud, who was assassinated last month by men believed to be
linked to Mr. bid Laden's network, said that it was impossible for him
to control all members of his alliance, Mr. Arlacchi said.