DRUGS IN AFGHANISTAN - PLAN MESHES INCENTIVES, PUNISHMENT

Kabul, Afghanistan

The world's biggest helicopter arrived recently at the airport in
Kabul. It is an imposing, even fearsome sight, with its bulbous head
and oversized propellers that seem to reach out forever before
drooping down far from the aircraft.

Guy Charlton spotted it first, and his shouts stirred a planeload of
bone-weary State Department and U.S. Embassy officials stretched out
under blankets and jackets as they returned from a visit to the
volatile Kandahar region.

The United States hopes the Russian-made Halo helicopter will be key
to saving Afghanistan from becoming, once again, a failed state and a
terrorist haven.

Charlton, senior aviation adviser at the U.S. Embassy, has leased the
helicopter -at $9,000 an hour - to move men around the country so they
can destroy the poppy fields that are subverting Afghanistan's
fledgling democracy through the corruption, violence and illicit
profits spawned by the trade in opium and heroin produced from the
poppies.

The Cold War-vintage MI-26 Halo can ferry 80 anti-drug troops and
carry vehicles. It provides Afghan eradication troops with speed,
safety and flexibility - each critical in a country whose roads are in
disrepair, are under insurgent attack or don't reach remote areas.

But will the offensive against drugs prove too little, too
late?

Until the last year or two, the United States did relatively little to
combat the burgeoning poppy problem because it was focused on securing
the country and building democracy. The irony is that the narcotics
trafficking that was allowed to flourish now poses a severe threat to
that very security and democracy. The $2.8 billion drug trade compares
with a legitimate Afghan economy of $4.6 billion.

Seated in his office at the new and highly fortified U.S. Embassy in
Kabul, U.S. Ambassador Ronald Neumann says the drug trade has put
Afghanistan at a crossroads.

"It jeopardizes the ability to build a modern democratic government
that Afghanistan has resolved to build. It is not possible to build
democratic institutions on the base of large amounts of drug money,"
Neumann says.

"Last year," he candidly acknowledges, "was not a success by any
means. Afghan efforts jelled late in the growing season. Our own
policies were a bit late. Our money came late. As a result, there are
a whole lot of changes going into this growing season. So this year is
the first real test of the policy."

The strategy

The new official in charge of the anti-drug effort is Tom Schweich, a
wiry and energetic man of 45. A graduate of Clayton High School, Yale
University and Harvard Law School, he spent 19 years with St. Louis'
biggest law firm, Bryan Cave. Schweich has done three separate stints
with former Sen. John C. Danforth, R- Mo., most recently as chief of
staff when Danforth was ambassador to the United Nations.

Three months ago, he was named to a senior post at the State
Department's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement
Affairs, where he coordinates an anti-narcotics Afghan policy that's
two parts carrot, three parts stick. It's carried out in large measure
by Afghans with help from Americans, while other countries assist in
specific areas - Germany, for instance, in police training, Italy in
legal reform.

The enticements involve informing Afghan citizens about how heroin
violates Islam's tenets while damaging their health; and offering
alternative livelihoods to farmers who stop growing poppies.

Each strategy bumps into inconvenient realities on the ground. A
switch to legitimate crops means a steep drop in income for farmers.
And touting anti-drug fatwahs - religious edicts - by Afghan clerics
is countered by Taliban insurgents who argue that not growing poppy
plays into the hands of anti-Islamic Western forces.

As a result, the three punitive components - eradication, interdiction
and prosecution - are key.

Going to Helmand

The poppy farmers are just now getting their first taste of the new
Afghan Eradication Force. The 600-strong unit had assembled outside
Lashkar Gah in Helmand province for the past couple of weeks and this
weekend began swooping down on the fields. Normally divided into
several teams, the force was combined because Helmand, on the border
of Pakistan, is particularly dangerous and critically important.
Heroin traffickers and insurgents have burned schools and clinics
there and attacked local police.

After the crew completed the long trek down from Kabul, it waited for
supply lines to be set up and local political approval to be obtained
before heading for the fields.

"It's very important for me, because Afghanistan is known all over the
world for drugs. This is a bad name for the people of Afghanistan,"
said Sayed Meskeen Wafakish, a commander who was seated in a tent as
his men milled outside, brandishing their guns. "If we clean this up,
we will be known as a good place. We are not stopping, because this
(drug-dealing) is shameful action."

Because the poppy plants are still small, the eradication forces will
use tractors to wreck them; as the crop grows taller and more brittle,
it is destroyed by hand. Aerial spraying, which would offend many
Afghans by recalling the Soviet bombardment of the 1980s, won't be
used.

Crops that survive face interdiction efforts aided by the U.S. Drug
Enforcement Administration, which involve snagging opium or heroin as
it's being transported.

Success in this area left Charlie Warren, a retired state trooper from
Milwaukee serving here as a security consultant, exuberant at 4 a.m.
recently. He had just learned that border police had arrested five
Afghan traffickers in Herat, close to Iran, as they transported 22
pounds of raw opium.

"We had a training session on searching in rice bags two days ago,"
Warren shared, "and now they found opium in a rice bag. They're eating
up this training. Everybody's pretty excited about locating contraband
drugs now. They see others getting kudos, they get jealous of each
other, so there's a little competition going on."

Alternatives

Afghans aren't shy about seeking more help. Helmand Gov. Engineer Daud
recently
said that the U.S. Agency for International Development had just approved his
plan to provide jobs for 6,000 small farmers to wean them from poppy crops,
but
that he needed $8 million to offer job opportunities for others in his
drug-plagued province. Schweich listened without making a commitment, later
privately praising Daud: "He's trying to do things like no one ever has
before."

An evening earlier, Kandahar Gov. Asadullah Khalid urged U.S.
diplomats to increase his funding to destroy poppies in his province
while getting farmers' fruit to market. He detailed his efforts to
curb suicide bombings and improve highway safety, while persuading
mullahs and village councils to oppose drugs. Recently, he said, his
forces arrested three highway police officers transporting 170 pounds
of heroin.

At his rented house in Kabul, Khalid made his plea while plying his
guests with an Afghan feast that featured a huge ceramic platter of
the local pilaf - basmati rice yellowed by saffron, chopped fruit and
large chunks of lamb - followed by milk pudding with pistachios.

U.S. officials said they would consider his request. Local authorities
are being repaid for eradication efforts only after results are
actually demonstrated and receipts for expenditures are verified.

Afghan officials walk a thin line between coaxing poppy farmers to
turning to something new and rewarding them for their illicit past.
The trick, says Mohammad Nabi Hussaini, director of the Afghan poppy
elimination program, is to offer economic opportunities without
directly favoring former poppy growers. The government is currently,
for example, pondering raising the price of surplus wheat.

Afghan justice

The plan's final element is to bring drug traffickers to justice while
deterring others from illicit behavior, by establishing functional
court systems long lacking in Afghanistan.

But building up Afghanistan's legal system runs into historical and
cultural obstacles. Italian diplomat Jolanda Brunetti Goetz describes
her role as helping Afghans improve their legal system "without
scrapping traditional Afghan tribal customs and provincial systems."

"They're suspicious," she admits. "We are not Muslim, and maybe we
want to impose our rules, our traditions."

Unlike many developing countries, Afghanistan was not colonized and
therefore wasn't left with a French or British or other legal system.
It has a judicial patchwork borrowed from Egyptian, Turkish, French,
Italian and other traditions - and even that essentially collapsed
during 23 years of war.

Moreover, only 15 percent of Afghan justice is dispensed by courts,
with the rest administered by consensus through village councils of
elders. Goetz says more attention should be devoted to this second
path, which helped hold the country together in recent decades.

But because notions of justice used in these local forums are so
ancient, she's trying to persuade Afghans to substitute rulings based
on the Quran, which she said is "more advanced."

Prospects for success

Clues as to whether Afghanistan can avoid slipping into narco-state
status are likely to emerge by the fall as the size of the crop and
the effectiveness of the U.S.-Afghan offensive come into focus.

In the long run, other factors may well prove decisive:

NOTE BULLETS

Reducing corruption. Many Afghan officials are secretly engaged in the
drug business or susceptible to being bribed. Afghan legal sources say
privately that evidence collected over the past year against prominent
provincial officials and police chiefs will spur indictments within a
month or two - weeding out bad apples while sending a broader message
that there is no future in narcotics.

Improving the economy. Without better job prospects for Afghanis, any
inroads against drugs may prove temporary.

Reducing demand. Heroin production wouldn't be growing without rising
demand. Many Afghans believe that consuming nations should do more to
curb the appetite within their borders. "Where there is demand, there
is supply, there is an offer," says Kahir Ismailee, an Afghan human
rights and education activist.

Patience and perseverance. U.S. Ambassador Neumann hopes modestly for
"a piece of progress one year, a piece of progress the next year."

One vexing problem is that enough opium has been hidden around
Afghanistan that even if not a single new poppy plant were grown,
processors and traffickers have enough to stay busy for years.

"This will not be resolved in 10 years," says Doug Wankel, who heads
the Counter Narcotics Task Force at the U.S. Embassy. "What I'd like
to see is the pendulum swing, so people say this is a new
Afghanistan."