NARCOTICS STRATEGY TO GET TOUGHER IN AFGHANISTAN

WASHINGTON - Worried about a vast and still growing heroin industry in
Afghanistan, the Bush administration has devised a more aggressive
counternarcotics strategy aimed at greater eradication of poppy fields,
promotion of alternative crops and prosecution of traffickers.

The plan, a mix of stronger carrots and sticks, attempts to bring more
coordination, more money and more muscle to Afghan and international
programs launched over the past three years that have not made much of a
dent in the lucrative drug business.

The intensified campaign stops short of using U.S. troops to target opium
labs and attack drug kingpins. At the Pentagon's insistence, U.S. forces
will be limited to supporting Afghan law enforcement by providing airlift
and intelligence leads to Afghan police and by helping tighten security
along Afghanistan's borders, administration officials said.

The new approach emerged from a high-level administration review this
summer of U.S. operations in Afghanistan.

President Bush is scheduled to be briefed this week on the revised U.S.
strategy, which his national security advisers approved in outline form in
mid-September. To fund it, officials expect to notify Congress soon of
plans to shift more than $700 million from other programs into Afghan
counternarcotics activities next year. That compares with about $123
million in '04.

"The issue in Afghanistan, I think from my viewpoint, is the drug issue,"
Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a
meeting of the Institute of Land Warfare this month.

In an impoverished country with an average per capita income of less than
$200 a year, the cash lure of the poppy plant is hard to resist.
Afghanistan ranks as the world's largest producer of heroin, with more than
450 square miles of poppies under cultivation.

The country's earnings from the opium trade, estimated last year to exceed
$2.3 billion, amount to more than half of Afghanistan's legal gross
domestic product. Assessments of this year's crop by the CIA and the United
Nations are due soon and will show a jump to record levels, officials said.

Most of the opium produced by Afghanistan goes to Europe, not the United
States, feeding 95 percent of Europe's heroin demand. But the drug business
has become a critical strategic concern for U.S. authorities because it
helps finance the activities of insurgents and regional warlords.