BRITAIN MAY BE SWAMPED WITH CHEAP HEROIN

THE world faces a new flood of Afghan heroin at throwaway prices as local
drug dealers and 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.

Yesterday a kilogram of opium was available on the Pakistan-Afghanistan
border for UKP100 compared to UKP460 at the start of the month. There are
an estimated 3,000 tons of opium in stock inside Afghanistan, the
equivalent of 300 tons of pure heroin.

Bernard Frahi, head of the UN Drugs Control programme said: "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."

He added: "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, Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban leader, issued an
edict banning poppy cultivation. The ban was rigorously enforced by the
Taliban, to the extent that UN and US counter-narcotics officials said in
March 2001 that there was virtually no production in Taliban-controlled
areas this year.

However, farmers were made destitute by the ban, because they had no seed
or fertiliser to grow any 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, which
fights for the Taliban in northern Afghanistan and funds its movement
against the Central Asian regimes by smuggling opium to Russia and Europe.

All these dealers now appear to be selling their stocks as quickly as they
can to raise cash. In the bumper year of 1999 Afghanistan produced 4,600
tons of opium, swamping the world with cheap heroin. About 80 percent of
Europe's heroin and 95 per cent of Britain's comes from Afghanistan.

So cheap was opium before the ban last year, that prices inside Afghanistan
had plummeted to just UKP20 a kilogram.