FORMER POPPY GROWERS IN AFGHANISTAN FACING GROWING HARDSHIP

With a religious decree and some serious resolve, the ruling Taliban
militia has virtually eradicated opium-producing poppy flowers from
Afghan soil. But the drug-fighting victory has had dark consequences
for the region's farmers.

In less than a year, the Taliban dramatically changed Afghanistan's
status as the world's largest producer of opium, the sticky sap used
to make heroin.

A skeptical international community is beginning to acknowledge the
success, while at the same time expressing concern about the possible
stockpiling of opium. But the Taliban - the fiercely fundamentalist
Islamic militia that controls 95 percent of Afghanistan - are angered
by what they see as a major global brush-off in the face of their
anti-opium feat.

Parched fields and dry weeds across what used to be Afghanistan's
flourishing poppy heartland are testaments to the opium eradication's
great cost: tens of thousands of farmers have been stripped of a
livelihood in a nation already wracked by civil war and the worst
drought in three decades.

"I planted cotton and corn but the drought has burned it all," said
Khan Shah, a 54-year-old former poppy farmer in Shawali, a sandy
village in eastern Afghanistan where hunger has already driven out
most of the residents.

Since the Taliban outlawed poppy cultivation last July, calling it a
violation of Islam, programs for planting alternative crops have
failed. Once-booming poppy villages like Shawali have fallen on hard
times, with abandoned houses, hungry people and soil bereft of life.

The lack of foreign help for desperate former poppy farmers has
strained relations between the Taliban and the international aid
community. It may also help explain some of the militia's recent
mischief, including the destruction of ancient Buddha statues and an
order to force Hindus to wear yellow labels on their shirts to
distinguish them from Muslims.

Arif Ayub, Pakistan's ambassador to Afghanistan, said the Taliban's
supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, was enraged when the United
Nations slapped additional sanctions on the regime last January to
punish it for alleged sponsorship of terrorism - and then failed to
give it credit for eradicating poppy.

Ayub said a Pakistani delegation was sent to Afghanistan last March to
try to persuade the Taliban not to blow up the Buddha statues but that
delegates were unable to make their case because Omar "would only talk
about U.N. sanctions and poppy."

The Pakistani ambassador said he believes the Taliban have concluded
that cooperating with the West on any issue is futile.

"The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan has honored its responsibility to
the world," said Amir Mohammed Hakaune, the top anti-drug official in
eastern Afghanistan. "If tragedy comes to our farmers, the blame goes
not to us but to the international community."

The truth is the world has begun to take notice of the Taliban's drug
war successes, despite accusations that the militia is still sitting
on large stockpiles of opium - charges the Taliban deny.

When Secretary of State Colin Powell announced a $43 million
humanitarian aid package for Afghanistan last month, he mentioned the
plight of the poppy farmers and called the poppy ban "a decision by
the Taliban that we welcome."

Verifying the anti-opium campaign took many months because of a time
lag in harvests and difficulties in getting access to crops inside
Afghanistan.

More than three quarters of the world's opium was produced in
Afghanistan only a year ago, when the country exported nearly 4,000
tons - more than all the other poppy-producing nations combined.

The Taliban used a combination of religious persuasion, grassroots
organization and police coercion to eradicate poppy. They set fire to
heroin laboratories and jailed some farmers, but most former poppy
growers obeyed the Taliban's religious edict against poppy without
questioning it.

"It is the decision of shariah (Islamic law) and of God. We have to go
along with it," said former poppy grower Sher Mohammed.

The Taliban's Hakaune said he estimates that half of the former poppy
farmers in three eastern provinces he oversees have become refugees.
Alternative crops such as corn, wheat, carrots, cotton, onions and
tomatoes have failed because of drought, insufficient irrigation and a
shortage of seeds, he said.

In Shawali, malnourished children shoo away flies and idle old men
stare at dead fields that once blossomed with crimson-red poppy
flowers. In some villages, former poppy growers have begun trading
their young daughters to clear debts or drastically reducing the
prices traditionally paid to give away daughters in marriage.

Mohammed Rachmani, a 26-year-old farmer in the eastern province of
Nangarhar, said the poppy fiasco was just another example of global
politics wreaking havoc with the welfare of the Afghan people - a
situation he said has characterized Afghanistan's history since the
Soviet invasion in 1979.

"We accept the poppy ban because we know heroin is bad for humanity,"
he said. "But the government and the world don't care if we live or if
we die."

Trying to get donor nations within the United Nations to help Afghan
farmers switch to legal crops "is an uphill battle," said Stephanie
Bunker, the Pakistan-based spokeswoman for the United Nation's
Afghanistan office.

But she said those nations are beginning to get the message that "this
ban is legitimate and that people are in dire need of
assistance."

Three Taliban officials interviewed on the poppy issue each said that
crop substitution was not their responsibility because the militia had
already done its share.

U.N. officials have accused Taliban of sacrificing the people's
welfare for higher priorities, most notably the civil war against a
northern-based alliance and the mission to install "pure" Islam in
Afghanistan.

Shah Mahmood Mangal, spokesman for the Taliban's High Commission for
Drug Control, said the ban on poppy is here to stay.

"We will continue to struggle against this drug not because of
expectations of help from the outside world," he said. "We do it
because of our pride as Afghans."