CHEAP HEROIN SET TO SWAMP THE WORLD

The world faces a new flood of cheap Afghan heroin as the country's drug
dealers and its ruling authority, the Taliban, rapidly dispose of their
stocks because of the threat of war and the need to raise money.

Prices of opium, the raw material for heroin, have fallen by 80 per cent in
the past three weeks. A kilogram of opium is now available on the
Pakistan-Afghanistan border for $298 compared with $1,371 a kilogram three
weeks ago. There are an estimated 3,000 tonnes of opium in stock inside
Afghanistan, the equivalent of 300 tonnes of pure heroin.

"The key factors for the dramatic fall in prices is the situation of war,
the lack of law and order and people preparing for the worst by selling
their stocks as quickly as possible," said Mr Bernard Frahi, head of the
United Nations Drugs Control program.

"The other factor is that in a situation of war the Taliban are unlikely to
impose their ban on poppy cultivation, so drugs traffickers are expecting
farmers to grow poppy again this year."

In July last year the Taliban banned poppy cultivation. The ban was
rigorously enforced, to the extent that UN drug officers said in March
there was virtually zero production. However, farmers were made destitute
by the ban, because they had no seed or fertiliser to grow alternative
crops and thousands of farm labourers who hoed and weeded the poppy crop
were out of work, swelling the ranks of refugees fleeing to Pakistan.

This summer several Western countries pledged aid to Afghan farmers to show
support for the Taliban ban. Nevertheless Western diplomats say various
Afghan drug dealers still have large opium stocks. The dealers include
Taliban leaders and commanders, as well as Afghan, Iranian and Pakistani
traders and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.

All these dealers now appear to be selling their stocks as quickly as they
can to raise cash.