TALIBAN BAN ON DRUG CROPS IS WORKING, U.S. CONCLUDES

The poppy ban has sent the price of opium soaring.

In a stall in Kandahar, the opium in the heavy bags is now selling for
as much as $500 for 2.2 pounds.

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 percent 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 dikes of packed earth, the fields are empty
of their most profitable plant.

Poor farmers, scythes in hand, stoop among brown stems. Mile after
mile, 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
Muhammad 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," said 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 said. 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 American 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 multimillion-dollar aid packages
that finance police raids, aerial surveillance and crop subsidies for
farmers. "We used a soft approach," said Abdul Hamid Akhundzada, who
heads the Taliban's anti-poppy program. "When there were violations,
we plowed the fields. At most, violators spent a few days in jail,
until they paid for the plowing." The Taliban, of course, are not
considered softies.

They whip women for exposing flesh at midcalf.

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," said Saleh Muhammad Agha, a farmer with seven
children and a meager wheat field. "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 apologized, and we plowed his
field and did nothing else," said Mullah Shah Wali, the administrator
in Nadali District. He was seated on the roof of his headquarters, not
far from a 35-millimeter antiaircraft gun. He eagerly showed off his
right leg, atrophied from a war wound. Haji Din Muhammad, a tribal
elder in the village of Passao, owns 150 acres. His land is nourished
by an irrigation system built a half century ago with American aid.
Poppies were his best crop, and he still sees nothing wrong with them.
After all, he said, he just grew the drugs.

He never urged anyone to use them. "But I have readily accepted the
ban," he insisted, seated on a fine carpet that only a wealthy man
could afford.

His four wives aÄî the maximum allowed under Islamic law aÄî were busy
with his 18 children. "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 percent 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 even in the face of mass 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 summer's end, according to the United Nations. 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," said Ghulam Muhammad 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," said 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
said. International reaction to the poppy ban has largely been
skeptical. Inspection teams, including the American 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 recognize 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," said 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,"
said Mullah Muhammad Hassan, the governor of Kandahar Province and one
of the Taliban's top figures.

Like many of the leaders, he was maimed in the 1980's in the jihad
against Soviet troops here. Mullah Omar lost an eye in the war; Mullah
Hassan drags a peg along the floor instead of a right leg. "Our people
are very needy," the governor said, 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, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell announced a $43 million
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, fertilizer and
pesticides aÄî the things that will again make them successful
farmers," said Bernard Frahi, who oversees the Afghanistan situation
for the United Nations 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," said Muhammad Sadiq, a drug dealer in a gold
prayer cap. He sat with a handful of friends, all of them pouring tea
out of small green pots. The smarter traders, like Mr. Sadiq, have
squirreled away their opium and now have the look of men watching
straw spun into gold. Last year, a kilo (2.2 pounds) of the drug sold
for $110; now it is as high as $500. Mr. Sadiq reached behind a
hanging white blanket 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 said. "Opium will get scarcer, the price will get higher.

I'm holding on to this as long as I can."