AFGHAN FARMERS STILL GROW OPIUM

JALALABAD, Afghanistan (AP) -- The Taliban rulers in Afghanistan say they're
implacably opposed to farmers growing the poppies that make this the world's
largest opium-producing country. But they are insisting on international
help before they take strong measures to stop cultivation.

To force dirt poor farmers to stop growing lucrative opium poppies without
offering them an alternative crop and some financial incentive would be
certain to cause an all-out rebellion, Taliban officials say.

The international community, however, does not feel particularly
sympathetic, and most nations, especially the United States, are warning the
Taliban religious army to halt poppy production.

Afghanistan is the single largest opium producer in the world, according to
United Nations figures. It produces 45 percent of the world's opium needs,
more than 2,000 tons.

Opium, extracted from the poppy plant, is the raw material used to make
heroin, often in ramshackle sheds tucked in the rugged mountains that run
like a jagged seam along the border with neighboring Pakistan. From there it
is smuggled to markets in Europe and North America.

For now, Taliban leaders have decided disgruntled farmers pose a greater
danger than angry world governments, said Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, spokesman
for the movement's reclusive leader.

He said the Taliban won't ban poppy growing until other nations come up with
money to compensate farmers, pay for substitute crops and finance
development that will translate into jobs.

"We know it is very important to ban poppy cultivation ... it is not an easy
thing to do," Muttawakil said.

In Nangarhar province, one of the richest poppy-growing regions of
Afghanistan, farmers say the Taliban couldn't stop them from growing poppies
even if they wanted to.

"How can they stop us?" asked Haji Aleem, whose income from poppies feeds 18
members of his family. "My father, before he died, said, 'Don't grow
poppies.' But I didn't listen because I need to feed my family. Do you think
I will listen to the Taliban?"

In an interview at the Taliban's southern headquarters of Kandahar,
Muttawakil agreed. Without a substitute crop and a viable economy, no one
can force the farmers to stop growing poppies, he said.

Taliban leaders say international agencies like the United Nations should
help build irrigation canals, roads and factories to entice farmers away
from growing poppies.

"You have to give them encouragement to stop cultivating," said Muttawakil.
"But so far they have done very little."

Farmers in Nangarhar province call opium the "golden crop" -- cheap to
cultivate and lucrative when harvested.

"Tell me how I am going to feed my family?" asked Rehmet Ullah. "Growing
wheat? There's no money in that."

Late April and early May is harvest time for the blood-red poppies, which
stretch like a sea along the potholed roads. Hundreds of farmers are in the
fields, slashing the swollen bulbs to release the milky white opium. Many of
the farmers are paid in advance for their crop.

While resisting acting against farmers, Taliban leaders did make one
concession to international pressure by destroying 34 laboratories where
opium is converted into heroin.

The United Nations says the problem is being tackled, if slowly.

In Kandahar, the U.N. Drug Control Program hopes poppy production this year
will be down about 10 percent and in Nangarhar slightly more.

U.N. officials estimate farmers in Kandahar planted 8,183 acres of poppies
this year, a decrease of 2,045 acres from a year ago. In Nangarhar, an
estimated 2,544 acres are growing poppies, a drop of 1,926 acres.

Claude Drouot, a U.N. drug control official in Pakistan, said the United
Nations is hopeful that poppy cultivation in Nangarhar and Kandahar will
disappear by 2001.

Muttawakil, however, said that won't happen without more aid.

Drouot said the U.N. Drug Control Program has very little money. It has
budgeted $10.5 million for drug control in Afghanistan this year, but so far
has provided just $6.2 million.

With little money for alternative crops and irrigation projects, Drouot is
taking another approach -- trying to shame the farmers into cutting back on
production.

At best Afghanistan's farmers and the Taliban, through taxes, make $130
million from poppy production each year, he said. Yet the heroin coming out
of Afghanistan generates more than $80 billion for narcotics dealers in the
West.

"So I tell them, 'You are working for others, getting all the blame and none
of the money,'" Drouot said.