STRUGGLING FOR SOLUTIONS AS OPIUM TRADE BLOSSOMS

TARIN KOT, Afghanistan -- On a recent cold spring day, just as the
first small sprouts of poppies began pushing out of the southern
Afghanistan earth, the members of Uruzgan province's poppy
eradication council gathered around a wood stove in the governor's
compound here for their first meeting.

"We should encourage people to eliminate poppies voluntarily,"
offered one official. "Ministers will go to the radio stations and
tell them to stop. Mullahs should go to the mosques and tell people
it's forbidden by Islam."

Mohammad Mawlawi, a mullah with a curly black beard extending down
the length of his chest, exploded in anger.

"The people won't listen to us if we go to the mosque and say it's
against our culture," he insisted. "No one wants to stop because the
government has done nothing for us. They say, 'We have no choice, we
have to make a living to support our families.'

"The people won't stop!" he repeated, waving his lime-green prayer
beads for emphasis.

In the last six years, the international community has set aside
hundreds of millions of dollars for Afghan poppy eradication, built a
state-of-the-art maximum-security facility for drug traffickers
outside Kabul and dispatched hundreds of troops to try to persuade
farmers to plant wheat, fruit trees and saffron instead of poppies.

The result of those efforts: Last year Afghanistan produced 90
percent of the world's opium and its derivative, heroin -- more than
at any time in the country's history. The only major drug traffickers
held in the new prison wing were allowed to escape. And a special
international fund for motivating Afghan leaders to eradicate poppies
has barely been touched, according to international officials
involved in Afghan anti-drug efforts.

While 13 provinces in the north and central parts of Afghanistan were
poppy-free last year, the number of acres under cultivation
nationwide increased 17 percent, according to a U.N. survey. More
than three-quarters of the poppy crop is cultivated in areas outside
government control, primarily in five southern provinces.

The war against poppies has been undercut by disagreements among NATO
allies and Afghan officials over how to stop cultivation, corrupt
Afghan officials and inefficient reconstruction efforts, according to
U.S., U.N., NATO and Afghan officials involved in the anti-drug effort.

Most militaries are loath to engage in eradication efforts because of
the danger to soldiers and the risk of angering the very farmers
whose support they are trying to win. Many poor farmers have managed
to survive only by selling their crops to the Taliban, the extremist
militia that has used profits from the drug trade to fund its resurgence.

"If you support eradication one day, you can't tell the people the
next day we're here for you," said Lt. Col. Tjerk Hogeveen, commander
of the Dutch combat troops in Uruzgan. "They won't believe you're
here to help them if you're destroying their only source of income.
If we want to win them over, supporting eradication without
alternatives is the wrong symbol."

The United States has pushed aggressively for aerial spraying,
similar to years-long programs in Colombia.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai and officials from many European
countries argued vigorously against spraying, saying it would kill
other crops and poison the land. The United States recently backed
down -- reluctantly -- under increasing pressure from Karzai, who in
turn is facing an upcoming election and domestic criticism that he is
subservient to Washington.

"We're not going to start spraying," said Tom Schweich, the U.S.
State Department's coordinator for counternarcotics and justice
reform in Afghanistan. "Karzai said he didn't want to, that it looked
heavy-handed."

Schweich said U.S. officials continue to disagree with Karzai and
many NATO allies.

"Spray by air, there are fewer people who die, but it appears more
heavy-handed," Schweich said. "Go in manually" on the ground "and it
appears less heavy-handed, but there are more deaths."

The sporadic attempts at forced eradication across Afghanistan have
largely failed because of inadequate law enforcement efforts and the
corruption that is rife among police and government agencies.

"Eradication is very costly," Antonio Maria Costa, director of the
U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, said in a telephone interview from
Vienna. "An enormous amount of money is spent with very little accomplished.

Afghan and NATO officials said that this year they are shifting
tactics, focusing on eradicating the poppy fields of large farmers,
rather than those of impoverished farmers with small plots who are
often indebted to drug traffickers, the Taliban or larger landowners.
But attempts to convict and imprison major drug traffickers have also
largely failed, officials said.

A year and a half ago, Costa inaugurated a $4.4 million
maximum-security wing at the Pul-i-Charki prison outside Kabul.
Funded by Britain and other European countries, the wing was designed
to hold major drug traffickers.

"I said then the weak link was the front door," Costa said. "No more
than two or three months later, four drug traffickers ran away
through the main door."

He said now "the vast majority of inmates are individuals who were
foot soldiers, not anyone with senior responsibility."

Few provinces have a worse track record on poppies than impoverished
Uruzgan in south-central Afghanistan, where the Helmand River valley
provides one of the region's key drug-trafficking routes.

As the Uruzgan poppy eradication council met around the wood stove,
one official passed around copies of notebooks that are being
distributed to schoolchildren. The title read, "If we don't destroy
the poppies, the poppies will destroy us." Evil-looking cartoon
poppies are shown strangling a child, a young woman and a gaunt drug
addict as an armed soldier, a woman wielding a Koran and a farmer
with a sickle try to protect them.

Debate around the wood stove was not nearly as clear-cut.

"The law says no one should grow poppies," began Gov. Assadullah
Hamdam, who has held his post since last fall. "If they do, they are
criminals. They destroy our country."

He said he is concerned about the increasing number of addicts in his
province, now estimated at 4,500, including significant numbers of
women and children. An internal U.N. report found that Uruzgan has
only 25 doctors serving a population of 320,000 and that no drug
treatment service exists. Until this meeting, the province had no
awareness campaign on the dangers of drug use.

One local official suggested that farmers wouldn't stop growing
poppies without money or other compensation from the government.

But because Uruzgan did not meet the poppy eradication quota set by
the government, the province will receive nothing this year from the
Afghan Counter Narcotics Trust Fund. Donor nations have contributed
tens of millions of dollars to provide provinces with incentives to
eradicate poppies and provide alternate livelihoods for farmers.

The governor looked irritated.

"Our government doesn't have enough money to pay every farmer to stop
poppy cultivation," he told the officials gathered around him. "If
you pay, they'll constantly ask for more."

"It's against Afghanistan's rules -- if they grow poppies, they'll be
punished," continued the governor. "We can't promise to help them.
Even if we can't help them, they should stop."

Privately, in an interview, Hamdam said he believes it will take a
decade more to end poppy production in his province.

"We don't know what to do," the governor said during the meeting with
local officials. "There are places we can't even go. How will we get
to those areas that are not even under the control of the government?"

No one offered an answer. As Hamdam glanced around the conference
room, some ministers had closed their eyes and appeared to be dozing.

The governor was exasperated. "We will do what we can, we will do our
best," he said.

He paused. And if that fails, he said, "we will pray to God to wash
out the poppy fields, to bring cold weather and snow, or floods."