KARZAI'S NEXT TEST - STAMPING OUT OPIUM

U.S. Officials Consider Using Troops To Quash Afghan Drug Trade

WASHINGTON - With Afghan President Hamid Karzai's election victory in
hand, U.S. and Afghan officials are focusing on Afghanistan's opium
poppies as the next major challenge.

Reports soon to be published by the CIA and the United Nations show
opium poppy cultivation is soaring, along with laboratory production
of heroin. The opium-based drug trade accounts for more than half of
Afghanistan's economy and most of the financing for remaining al-Qaeda
and Taliban forces.

Pentagon and State Department policy planners are trying to decide
whether U.S. troops should play a role beyond intelligence in
eradicating the drug trade, now left to the fledgling Afghan army and
police under the supervision of British forces."This is a huge
challenge for the new government," said Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S.
ambassador to Afghanistan. "We've been thinking a lot about this issue
in the course of the last several weeks and months, and we're on the
verge of embracing a more robust strategy to deal with this problem."

Mr. Karzai has repeatedly spoken of the threat drug trafficking poses
to Afghanistan's future, and his election triumph gives him greater
authority for moving against it.

But Barnett Rubin, an Afghanistan specialist at New York University,
said a successful strategy for curbing the drug trade has to start
with cutting off security alliances with drug traffickers, and with
the recognition that using U.S. forces to eradicate poppy fields could
make enemies of Afghan farmers.

"There's no way we can eliminate this as long as we are publicly
allied with major traffickers - which we are," he said. "Some have
even been arrested by the U.S. military with trucks full of heroin and
let go."

Mr. Karzai has moved against some powerful regional leaders with ties
to the drug trade, but others who were allies in the early stages of
the war against the Taliban remain in power, even within Mr. Karzai's
Cabinet, Mr. Rubin said.

British officials say they expect opium production will start falling
next year now that most of the pieces are in place for a sustained
campaign against drugs. They share some of Mr. Rubin's concerns about
alienating farmers by emphasizing eradication, which some members of
Congress are pressing on the Bush administration.

Finding the carrot

U.S. officials won't say what role the military might play in curbing
the Afghan drug trade. But crop eradication has to be part of the
overall strategy, said Patrick Fine, director of the Afghan office of
the U.S. Agency for International Development.

"There has to be a carrot, and there has to be a stick that makes
growing poppy very risky," he said. "Right now, with the Afghan police
and army, if you are caught, your crops will be ripped out. Farmers
will see the alternatives are better because of this risk of
eradication."

For some Afghan poppy farmers, it's hard to get out of the opium
business. Mr. Fine and Mr. Rubin agree that many Afghan farmers are
sharecroppers who need land and credit to raise food crops. Drug
traffickers, the only source of rural credit in much of Afghanistan,
provide land and money for seeds and fertilizers in exchange for notes
promising delivery of cash that can only be raised through opium sales.

Farmers unable to pay are either killed, beaten or forced to hand over
their daughters, Mr. Rubin said.

"There's no court system to protect them. If they don't supply that
cash, they are threatened by armed men and either turn to crime or
give their daughters to traffickers," he said.

The British strategy involves offering other sources of credit, tools
and training in rural Afghanistan. Eradication efforts coupled with
compensation haven't worked, however, because they encouraged other
farmers to plant opium looking for the same rewards.

Offering farmers alternatives to opium hasn't been easy. The U.N.
Office on Drugs and Crime and the Afghan government surveyed farmers
this year and found opium poppies yielded an average of $12,700 per
hectare (2.4711 acres), while wheat and other farm products yielded
$222 per hectare.

The survey found opium poppies growing on 80,000 hectares across
Afghanistan. The reports pending at the United Nations and CIA show
another big increase this year, U.S. officials say.

Assistant Secretary of State Robert Charles estimates poppy
cultivation has hit 100,000 hectares, which could translate into an
increase in Afghan opium production of 20 percent to 40 percent.

Last year, Afghanistan produced an estimated 3,600 metric tons of
opium, or roughly three-fourths of the world supply.

"We stand in the darkness of a long shadow," Mr. Charles told a
congressional committee last month. "We and the Afghans can see the
way forward, and there is increased urgency to the mission, but there
remain challenges."

Big picture

Mr. Fine, who oversees $1.9 billion in U.S. reconstruction funds for
Afghanistan, said poppy growers need help that goes beyond planting
wheat instead of opium poppies.

"You need to look at food processing, at the ways to add value, not
just other crops," he said. "You need to get money into the rural
economy to create jobs through public works, like building roads."

So far, U.S. assistance has restored irrigation for 285,000 hectares
of farmland, built more than 1,000 kilometers of rural roads and
rebuilt 119 village markets.

Moral suasion also plays a role, Mr. Fine said. Afghanistan's
religious leaders issued a fatwa, or scholarly decree, last summer
saying opium growing was against Islam.

The U.N. survey found that nearly all opium poppy growers realize
they're breaking the law, however. The main reason they keep growing
poppies is economic necessity, the survey found.