THE POWER OF THE POPPY

In Britain and elsewhere in a few weeks time, one will see people wearing
red paper flowers in buttonholes or pinned to jackets and coats. The flower
is a poppy, and it's worn in honor of Remembrance Day-Nov. 11th-in memory
of soldiers who died in the wars of the 20th century. More specifically,
Remembrance Day commemorates the soldiers who were cut down in World War I
in the fields of Flanders where wild poppies grew. This year, I imagine,
the act of commemoration will also honor those who died in Washington and
New York on Sept. 11th.

In Afghanistan, the poppy represents something else altogether -- something
so powerful that, upon taking over the country, the Taliban banned the
flower's cultivation. Yet as in Britain, the poppy is also a symbol of wars
fought. Afghanistan's poppy crop, of course, produces opium and heroin, and
the history of Afghanistan and the history of heroin have in recent times
been tightly bound together. (Lately, the Taliban regime appears to have
developed a more relaxed stance toward the poppy because its religious
objections to heroin production appear less important than its thirst for
money. This map illustrates the two main areas of Afghanistan where opium
poppies grow-around Kandahar and Jalalabad.) In the war against the Soviet
Union in the 1980s, the Afghan mujahideen offered what one might describe
as weapons-grade heroin to Soviet soldiers in the hopes of transforming the
occupying Red Army into drug addicts; according to Jane's Security, the
experiment was less than successful. Yet the chief object of heroin
production was to fund mujahideen's purchase of weapons they needed to
fight the Soviet enemy. This enterprise was evidently promoted by the CIA
and by the CIA-trained Pakistan security force the ISI, who strongly
encouraged the cultivation of poppies as a cash crop. As Jane's points out:
"Opium cultivation and heroin production in Pakistan's northern tribal belt
and neighboring Afghanistan was also a vital offshoot of the ISI-CIA
co-operation. It succeeded . in boosting heroin sales in Europe and the US
through an elaborate web of well-documented deceptions, transport networks,
couriers and payoffs." While Nancy Reagan was asking everyone to just say
no to drugs, over the horizon and out of sight other Americans sponsored a
program of just say yes.