THE TALIBAN "JUST SAYS NO" IN HEROIN'S HEARTLAND AFGHANISTAN

HELMAND PROVINCE. This has been heroin's great heartland, where the
narcotic came to life as an opium resin taken from fragile buds of red and
white poppies. Last year, 75 per cent of the world's opium crop was grown
in Afghanistan, with the biggest yield sprouting from here in the fertile
plains of the country's south, sustained by the meander of the Helmand River.

But something astonishing has become evident with this spring's harvest.
Behind the narrow dykes of packed earth, the fields are empty of their most
profitable plant. Poor farmers, scythes in hand, stoop among brown stems.

Kilometre after kilometre, there is only a dry stubble of wheat to cut from
the lumpy soil.

Last July, the ruling Taliban banned the growing of poppies as a sin
against the teachings of Islam. The edict was issued by Mullah Mohammed
Omar, referred to as Amir-ul-Momineen, the supreme leader of the faithful.

Almost every farmer complied, some grudgingly, some not. "Even if it means
my children die, I will obey my amir," says Nur Ali, sitting in his fields,
sipping tea. Like most Afghan men, he wore a turban coiled around his head
like a holy bandage. "And the day my amir says I can grow poppy again, I
will do that too," he says.

The world is unused to good news coming from Afghanistan, known these days
as a womb for global jihad and an unsafe preservation site for Buddhist
statues.

But US narcotics officials who visited the country confirmed earlier United
Nations reports that the Taliban had, in one growing season, managed a rare
triumph in the long and losing war on drugs. And they did it without the
usual multi-million-dollar aid packages that finance police raids, aerial
surveillance and crop subsidies for farmers.

"We used a soft approach," says Abdul Hamid Akhundzada, who leads the
Taliban's anti-poppy program. "When there were violations, we ploughed the
fields. At most, violators spent a few days in jail, until they paid for
the ploughing."

The Taliban, of course, are not considered softies. They whip women for
exposing flesh at mid-calf. They jail men for trimming their beards. They
hold public executions in stadiums full of cheering people.

But this spring's poppy crop seems to have died a relatively quiet death.

"No one dared disobey," says Saleh Mohammed Agha, a farmer with seven
children and a meagre wheatfield. "If they catch you, they blacken your
face and march you through the bazaars with a string of poppies around your
neck."

The ban was carried out through the chain of command. The wisdom of the
Holy Koran guided Mullah Omar. He in turn communicated with his provincial
governors, who informed their district administrators. The administrators
then explained the ban to local mullahs and tribal elders, who passed the
news to the farmers.

Violators were few. In the village of Loay Bagh, one elderly man tried to
conceal his poppies in a patch of onions. The camouflage proved inadequate.

"He apologised, and we ploughed his field and did nothing else," says
Mullah Shah Wali, the administrator in Nadali District.

Haji Din Mohammed, a tribal elder in the village of Passao, owns 60.7
hectares. His land is nourished by an irrigation system built 50 years ago
with US aid. Poppies were his best crop, and he still sees nothing wrong
with them. After all, he says, he just grew the drugs. He never urged
anyone to use them.

"But I have readily accepted the ban," he insists, seated on a fine carpet
that only a wealthy man could afford. "I would never go against
Amir-ul-Momineen. And I have no fear. God will provide."

Mullah Omar hails from southern Afghanistan, where the Taliban began their
conquest of the country in 1994 as a ragtag group of students and mullahs.
They first fought against local warlords who had busied themselves with
thievery, rape and murder. The Taliban took Kabul, the capital, in 1996,
and they now control 80 to 90 per cent of the country. While their stern
version of Islam often encounters resentment in the cities, they remain
heroes in the countryside.

Most farmers think of Mullah Omar as an Allah-appointed savior whose
religious zeal has prompted the poppy ban despite the hardship it would cause.

The country is in the fourth year of a calamitous drought. More than one
million people face an "unbridgeable" shortage of food and water before
their summer's end, according to the UN. The relatively drought-resistant
poppy would have provided some of them with vital income. Instead they have
parched and stunted wheat.

"A lot of us simply left the land untilled," says Ghulam Mohammed in the
village of Shin. "The harvest can't make up for the costs of the planting."

Poppy was not only profitable, it spread the money around. The work was
labor intensive. Landowners had to hire field hands to turn the soil and
collect the opium paste. The ban has denied jobs to hundreds of thousands.

Many of these laborers have now fled to Pakistan or Iran or the huge camps
that have filled up like arenas near the city of Herat. Others are found
eating roots and grass. In some villages, flour is considered too precious
to be used in bread; it lasts longer if mixed with water and cooked as a soup.

"The only money in my life is the money I owe," says a weathered old man
named Jamaluddin. He was tarrying around a wheat field, hoping to trade a
few hours of work for a cup of tea. "Life is unbearable," he says.

International reaction to the poppy ban has largely been sceptical.

Inspection teams, including the US one, have found little or no poppy. But
many critics question the Taliban's motives. In earlier years, the poppy
harvest had multiplied. Why did Mullah Omar finally now decide to just say no?

Some suspect political artifice: only three nations, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia
and the United Arab Emirates, officially recognise the Taliban as a
government. Perhaps the poppy ban was a push for legitimacy.

Recent swoons in opium prices are also mentioned. The Taliban stopped poppy
cultivation, but they have not outlawed the drug's possession or sale.
Stockpiles exist. With the price quadrupling, and more, Mullah Omar's edict
has handed some a windfall.

But aid workers in Afghanistan tend to regard the ban as straightforward
and commendable. "Most anyone else would have said: we'll do this if you'll
do that," says Leslie Oqvist, coordinator for the United Nations regional
office in Kandahar. "But the Taliban acted unilaterally, and now they're
rightfully concerned that no assistance is forthcoming."

Taliban officials stress that the poppy ban is rooted in religious
principles and not in any quid pro quo. Nevertheless, they are well aware
that wealthier nations often gratefully compensate Third World allies in
the drug war. American assistance to Colombia, Peru and Bolivia is
mentioned by example.

"A fair reply to what we have done would have been some acknowledgment of
the achievement," says Mullah Mohammed Hassan, the governor of Kandahar
Province and one of the Taliban's top figures.

"Our people are very needy," the governor says, speaking softly but
pointedly. "They have given up the poppy crop, and timely financial
assistance is very important."

Little aid has arrived for the poppy farmers. Last week, US Secretary of
State Colin Powell announced a $43million grant for drought relief in
Afghanistan. His statement mentioned "those farmers who have felt the ban
on poppy cultivation, a decision by the Taliban that we welcome". But most
of that money is likely to be directed to emergency food and shelter. Torn
by war hunger, Afghanistan is a bottomless well of need, and poppy farmers
will become poppy refugees unless they find something else to plant that
will feed their families.

"People require seed, fertiliser and pesticides, the things that will again
make them successful farmers," says Bernard Frahi, who oversees the
Afghanistan situation for the UN Drug Control Program. "We must provide
roads, water and bridges or the poppy will come back."

But the betting is that the ban will hold up. On a dusty lane in Kandahar,
where a few dozen narrow stalls make up the city's main opium bazaar, the
traders not only talk of the poppy farmer in the past tense, but also
themselves as well.

"It's obvious our stocks are going down, and they won't be replaced," says
Mohammed Sadiq, a drug dealer in a gold prayer cap.

The smarter traders, like Mr Sadiq, have squirrelled away their opium and
now have the look of men watching straw spun into gold. Last year, a
kilogram of the drug sold for $110; now it is as high as $500.

Sadiq reached behind a blanket hanging at the rear of his stall and opened
two metal chests. Inside were heavy bags of opium stuffed into heavy brown
plastic. He pulled a few out.

"The days of the poppy in Afghanistan are over," he says.

"Opium will get scarcer, the price will get higher. I'm holding on to this
as long as I can."