THE TALIBAN'S CASH CROP

HEARTLESS terrorists are not the sole export of the Taliban government in
Afghanistan. The United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime
Prevention estimates that Afghanistan supplies roughly 80 percent of the
world's opium used to make heroin.

Last year's promise by Taliban officials to prohibit farmers from growing
poppies now appears to be a ruse.

"They warehoused enormous amounts of opium and drove the prices up," says
Asa Hutchinson, the new chief of the Drug Enforcement Administration. But
that strategy has now been reversed: The drugs are being rapidly sold off
in anticipation of a US attack. Taliban officials this week gave the signal
to farmers to resume opium cultivation.

With one hand, the Taliban's supreme leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, thumps
the Koran and declares opium production "un-Islamic." With the other, he
and his fellow hypocrites collect taxes on both poppy farmers and heroin
production labs. The Taliban leaders obviously don't care if their drugs
pollute the bloodstreams of "infidels." Nearly 90 percent of Europe's
heroin originates in Afghanistan. But how do they justify distribution in
Pakistan, Iran, and other Muslim countries?

In an interview Tuesday, Hutchinson cited a "symbiotic relationship"
between opium producers and terrorists in Afghanistan. In 1999, a Newsweek
article quoted US authorities as saying that bin Laden's followers were
active in shipping drugs across Iran to Turkey.

Criminal and fanatic masterminds have become one in this rogue country
where Osama bin Laden, the man wanted for planning the Sept. 11 carnage at
the World Trade Center, finds comfort.

This week, President Bush issued an executive order to freeze the financial
assets of individual and organizational fronts for bin Laden. But as long
as poppy fields capable of producing 4,000 tons annually remain, there will
be a ready supply of cash for the terrorists and their Taliban sponsors. A
strike at the financial heart of terrorism requires both the destruction of
opium at its source and disruption of the trade routes that bring the
warehoused drugs to market.

The United States has some experience in the aerial fumigation of coca and
poppy fields in Colombia, where most of the heroin sold in the United
States originates. The task can be accomplished in remote areas of
Afghanistan with herbicides that pose little risk to human health. As
military and federal law enforcement officials ponder strategic targets,
surely the poppy fields of Afghanistan should rank high. And if the
destruction of the crop creates civil unrest that weakens the Taliban, so
much the better.

The growing season for opium begins shortly. America and its allies should
uproot this poison of global reach.