WAR ON TERRORISM ALARMS DRUG TRAFFICKERS ON AFGHAN-TAJIK BORDER

DUSHANBE, Tajikistan -- Expected military strikes against Afghanistan have
sent fears rippling among some of the Bush administration's declared foes,
illegal drug traffickers.

The United Nations said seizures of opium and heroin along the Afghan-
Tajik border have doubled since the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon.

That is an indication, it says, that drug traffickers are trying to empty
their stocks before any fighting in Afghanistan disrupts business.

Matthew Kahane, a senior U.N. official in the Tajik capital, said drug
traffickers fear they will become targets of the administration's declared
war against terrorism and those who fund it.

"They assume the war on terrorism will target the financial bases of
terrorism, and drugs is one of them," Kahane said.

Afghanistan's ruling Taliban banned the growing of opium poppies last year
as a sin against Islam.

The ban helped Afghanistan win $43 million in emergency aid to help it deal
with the effects of a prolonged drought.

Still, enormous amounts of opium and heroin stockpiled before the ban
continue to flow out of the country, most of it through Tajikistan and
Russia on its way to Europe, U.N. and Tajik officials say.

Since Sept. 11, confiscations of heroin in Tajikistan by Tajik and Russian
border guards have doubled from three to six a week, with each seizure
averaging between 110 and 176 pounds, Kahane said.

He and other international narcotics experts believe that the seizures
account for roughly 10 percent of the overall trade.

Most of the international attention on Afghanistan's narcotics trade has
focused on the ruling Taliban and a feared merger between drugs and growing
militancy in neighboring Central Asia.

Until the Taliban's ban on poppy growing, Afghanistan produced three-
quarters of the world's opium, with most of the heroin reaching Europe.

Yet analysts and officials here say the lucrative business encompasses a
wide range of participants, including Tajik officials, Russian troops and
the Afghan rebel coalition whose anti-Taliban struggle received the public
endorsement last week of President Bush.

"Everyone feeds on it," said Muzaffar Olimov, director of the Orient Public
Policy Center in Tajikistan.

Both the Taliban and their rivals occupy territory used to cultivate poppy
fields, and each controls sections of the frontier where processed heroin
leaves the country, Olimov and U.N. officials said.

A top official for Tajikistan's Ministry of Security said Russian military
officers and soldiers also play a leading role in the region's illegal trade.

Russian military aircraft are barred from inspection by Tajik authorities
and are routinely used to transport heroin from Tajikistan to military
bases in Russia, the official said.

About 16,000 Russian soldiers and border guards are based in this former
Soviet Central Asian republic. They hold the main responsibility for
monitoring Tajikistan's 1,000-mile border with neighboring Afghanistan.

For this arid, mountainous country of 6 million people, the implications
for the curtailment of the drug trade are potentially dire.

Olimov and U.N. officials said the trafficking of heroin accounts for 20 to
30 percent of the economy of Tajikistan, whose per capita income is less
than $1 per day.

Many poor Tajiks are employed as couriers to carry heroin by train to Moscow.

Authorities say they are paid up to $200 for each trip, or paid in kind
with heroin. Women with children are particularly coveted as couriers,
because they are less subject to inspection and if caught, routinely serve
lighter jail sentences than men.

Politically, analysts said, the drug trade helps knit together a fragile
coalition government of poorly paid officials and military officers.

Tajikistan's deputy prime minister earns $25 a month, for example, so the
temptation to enter the illicit business is high.

Last year, Tajikistan's ambassador to Kazakstan was apprehended with more
than 110 pounds of heroin. In a separate incident, Russian authorities
found the narcotic in a diplomatic pouch to Moscow.

For Olimov, the pervasiveness of the drug trade has crippled a country
trying to recover from a devastating civil war in the 1990s and attempting
to affirm its independence 10 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

"Drug trafficking is becoming a national tragedy for Tajikistan," he said.