POPPY SPRAYING MULLED

Afghans Reconsider: Taliban Opium Profits Prompt Bold Promise

JALALABAD, Afghanistan -- With profits from this spring's record opium
crop fuelling a broad Taliban offensive, Afghan authorities say they
are considering a once-unthinkable way to deal with the scourge:
spraying poppy fields with herbicide.

Afghans, including President Hamid Karzai, are deeply opposed to
spraying the crop, but U.S. officials in Kabul and Washington are
pushing for it.

Last week, Afghanistan's top drug enforcement official said he would
contemplate spraying opium crops -- even with airborne crop-dusters --
if other efforts fail to cut the size of the coming year's crop.

"This year, we'll wait and see how it goes. Next year, the 2008
season, we will consider it," said Lt.-Gen. Mohammed Daoud Daoud on
the sidelines of an anti-poppy gathering in Jalalabad, the ancient and
verdant capital of Nangahar province, once the heart of Afghanistan's
poppy belt.

This year, Nangahar was a success. Poppy cultivation stayed low amid a
boom that saw Afghanistan produce 82 per cent of the world's opium,
providing for 90 per cent of its heroin, according to U.S. and United
Nations figures.

Opium eradication is one of the great failures of the five-year period
since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001.

In 2000, under the Islamist Taliban government, Afghanistan produced
virtually no opium.

Planting has soared since then, jumping 59 per cent this year, enough
to produce 6,700 tonnes of opium that fetched around US$750 million
for Afghan farmers and eventually sold for $50 billion US on the
street, mainly in Europe, according to a UN report.

Drug money is believed to nourish much of the insurgency U.S. allies
in in Afghanistan are fighting.