TALIBAN'S BAN ON POPPY A SUCCESS, U.S. AIDES SAY

United Nations - The first American narcotics experts to go to Afghanistan
under Taliban rule have concluded that the movement's ban on opium-poppy
cultivation appears to have wiped out the world's largest crop in less than
a year, officials said today.

The American findings confirm earlier reports from the United Nations drug
control program that Afghanistan, which supplied about three-quarters of
the world's opium and most of the heroin reaching Europe, had ended poppy
planting in one season.

But the eradication of poppies has come at a terrible cost to farming
families, and experts say it will not be known until the fall planting
season begins whether the Taliban can continue to enforce it.

"It appears that the ban has taken effect," said Steven Casteel, assistant
administrator for intelligence at the Drug Enforcement Administration in
Washington.

The findings came in part from a Pakistan-based agent of the administration
who was one of the two Americans on the team just returned from eight days
in the poppy-growing areas of Afghanistan.

Mr. Casteel said in an interview today that he was still studying aerial
images to determine if any new poppy-growing areas had emerged. He also
said that some questions about the size of hidden opium and heroin
stockpiles near the northern border of Afghanistan remained to be answered.
But the drug agency has so far found nothing to contradict United Nations
reports.

The sudden turnaround by the Taliban, a move that left international drug
experts stunned when reports of near-total eradication began to come in
earlier this year, opens the way for American aid to the Afghan farmers who
have stopped planting poppies.

On Thursday, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell announced a $43 million
grant to Afghanistan in additional emergency aid to cope with the effects
of a prolonged drought. The United States has become the biggest donor to
help Afghanistan in the drought.

"We will continue to look for ways to provide more assistance to the
Afghans," he said in a statement, "including those farmers who have felt
the impact of the ban on poppy cultivation, a decision by the Taliban that
we welcome."

The Afghans are desperate for international help, but describe their
opposition to drug cultivation purely in religious terms.

At the State Department, James P. Callahan, director of Asian affairs at
the Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs who was
one of the experts sent to Afghanistan, described in an interview how the
Taliban had applied and enforced the ban. He was told by farmers that "the
Taliban used a system of consensus-building."

They framed the ban "in very religious terms," citing Islamic prohibitions
against drugs, and that made it hard to defy, he added. Those who defied
the edict were threatened with prison.

Mr. Callahan said that in the southern provinces of Kandahar and Helmand,
where the Taliban's hold is strongest, farmers said they would rather
starve than return to poppy cultivation -- and some of them will, experts say.

In parts of Nangahar province in the east, where the Taliban's hold is less
complete, farmers told the visiting experts that they would flee to
Pakistan or risk illegal crops rather than watch their families die.

The end of opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has come at a huge cost
to farmers, Mr. Callahan and Mr. Casteel said. The rural economy,
especially in the usual opium-poppy areas, had come to rely on the
narcotics trade. "The bad side of the ban is that it's bringing their
country -- or certain regions of their country -- to economic ruin," Mr.
Casteel said. "They are trying to replace the crop with wheat, but that is
easier said than done."

"Wheat needs more water and earns no money until it is sold," Mr. Casteel
said. "With the opium trade they used to get their money up front."

The Taliban, who used to collect taxes on the movement of opium, is also
losing money, adding another layer of difficulty for a government that is
already isolated and not recognized diplomatically by most nations.

Afghanistan is now under United Nations sanctions, imposed at the
insistence of the United States because the Islamic movement will not turn
over Osama bin Laden for trial in connection with attacks on two American
Embassies in Africa in 1998.

American experts and United Nations officials say the Taliban are likely to
face political problems if the effects of the opium ban are
catastrophic and many people die.