POST-INVASION CHAOS BLAMED FOR DRUG SURGE

Afghanistan's Opium Poppy Crop Is At A Record Level
Trafficking And Use Are Rising In Iraq

WASHINGTON -- Afghanistan's opium poppy crop this year is set to break
all records, surging past the peak levels reported under the Taliban
regime, top American and international counter-narcotics officials
said.

At the same time, U.N. and U.S. officials are increasingly worried by
signs of a nascent drug trade developing in Iraq, where smugglers are
taking advantage of the continuing chaos and unguarded borders.

Instability in the wake of the U.S.-led invasions of Afghanistan and
Iraq has resulted in one booming market for the production of drugs,
and a second potential market for narcotics sale and transit,
officials said.

"All post-conflict situations, whether in Iraq or Afghanistan, are
always characterized by a significant increase in addiction," said
Antonio Maria Costa, the head of the United Nations' Office on Drug
and Crimes. "The problem is definitely there."

In testimony last month, Robert B. Charles, the assistant secretary
who heads the State Department's Bureau for International Narcotics
and Law Enforcement Affairs, told Congress that CIA figures, expected
to be released in a matter of weeks, show Afghanistan's opium poppy
cultivation approaching 250,000 acres, up more than 60% from the 2003
level.

In an interview late last week, Charles acknowledged that the
cultivation levels apparently exceed even the previous record of about
160,000 acres of opium poppy, reached in 2000. The Taliban was
aggressively promoting the crop at the time to finance military
operations but banned it later that year, citing religious reasons.

Afghanistan is already the world's leading supplier of opium, which
can be processed into a variety of narcotics, including heroin. Most
of Afghanistan's heroin is exported to Europe and surrounding
countries; less than 10% reaches the U.S. Charles said that although
there was growing momentum behind efforts to halt production, the U.S.
continued to fear the development of a narco-economy that could swamp
Afghanistan's nascent democracy.

"There is a dark shadow that hangs over the country," Charles said.
"If we don't do the right thing about tackling this potentially
damaging heroin economy, we're certainly all going to regret it."

The country's exploding drug production has already become an issue in
the U.S. presidential campaign. In Thursday's debate in Florida,
Democratic candidate Sen. John F. Kerry cited the burgeoning opium
poppy crop as evidence of President Bush's "colossal misjudgment" in
turning his attention from Afghanistan to wage war in Iraq.

Repeating a U.N. estimate, Kerry said heroin production represents
between 40% and 60% of Afghanistan's gross domestic product. The U.N.
and the Economist magazine's Intelligence Unit have estimated that the
value of last year's heroin and opium production in Afghanistan ranged
from $1 billion to as much as $2.3 billion -- equivalent to the whole
aid package pledged by the U.S. at a March donor's conference in Berlin.

"Iraq is not even the center of the focus of the war on terror; the
center is Afghanistan," Kerry said.

Indeed, U.S., U.N. and Afghan officials believe that opium smuggling
is a source of funding for Taliban insurgents, Al Qaeda terrorists and
criminal gangs operating in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Much of the opium is exported through the lawless border region
between Afghanistan and Pakistan where Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden
is believed to be hiding, officials said. Insurgents encourage small
farmers in areas they control to grow the drug, and charge a tax on it
for transportation.

During a surprise visit to Afghanistan in August, Secretary of Defense
Donald H. Rumsfeld described the drug boom as one of the biggest
threats to Afghanistan's democracy, which is preparing for
presidential elections Saturday.

"To the extent the demand for drugs continues to produce hundreds of
millions of dollars for revenue to ... criminals engaged in the
drug-trafficking trade, it is harmful," Rumsfeld said. "We see what
happens in countries where that takes place. It's corrosive. It can
affect the entire political process. It leads to other types of crime
and corruption. It is a very dangerous thing." So far, efforts to stem
the production boom have been ineffectual. The British have taken the
lead in Afghanistan in eradication efforts, and seized some 34 tons of
opiates this year -- about 1% of the estimated production.

Efforts by Afghan and coalition forces to convince farmers to give up
growing poppy plants also have yielded few results. In a country whose
economy remains a shambles, the crop represents one of the few
profitable enterprises.

The U.S. has cited Colombia, where leftist guerrillas and right-wing
militants also have traded in narcotics to fund their operations, as a
model for drug reduction efforts. Coca production is down 21% in
Colombia, which remains the single largest source of cocaine consumed
in the United States. The U.S. has poured more than $3 billion into
Colombia's drug eradication effort, the key component of which is an
aggressive aerial fumigation campaign. There are no such efforts
underway in Afghanistan.

"Very little has been done effectively to stop" opium cultivation in
Afghanistan, said Bathsheba Crocker, a scholar at the nonpartisan
Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington who has
followed reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. "There's not
been anywhere near as serious or robust an effort as there should have
been." In Iraq, meanwhile, both the U.N. and U.S. officials are
concerned about recent anecdotal evidence of an increase in drug
trafficking and consumption. Iraq is believed to have been relatively
drug-free under Saddam Hussein's rule.

State Department counter-narcotics experts believe Syrian traffickers
are making use of Iraq's poorly guarded borders to transport
fenethylline, a synthetic drug more commonly known as Captagon that is
similar to amphetamine.

The drug is a favorite among the wealthy party crowd in Saudi Arabia
and the Gulf states.

Troops from the U.S. Army's 1st Infantry Division recently encountered
a "large" amount of drugs and drug paraphernalia during raids against
insurgents in north-central Iraq, said Master Sgt. Robert Powell, a
spokesman for the unit. He said details of the raid were not
immediately available.

Costa, the U.N. official, said his investigators had detected signs of
drug trafficking in Iraq last year, during a visit shortly before the
bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad in August 2003.

A decade of sanctions had created a vast network of smugglers in Iraq
who sold oil on the world market. After the U.S. invasion, however,
oil exports became legal and thousands -- perhaps tens of thousands --
of people involved in smuggling rings suddenly found themselves out of
work, Costa said. Many, it is believed, have turned their skills
toward transporting other illicit substances.

"It's not only drugs. We're talking about arms smuggling, artifacts,
looted goods," said Mustafa Alani, the head of security and terrorism
studies for the Gulf Research Center, a think tank in Dubai, United
Arab Emirates. "There is no control of the borders." The effort to
combat drugs in Iraq is all but nonexistent, with both U.S. and Iraqi
efforts focused on controlling the insurgency.

So far, a handful of Iraqi police officers has received
counter-narcotics training. The State Department has five drug experts
in Iraq, but their mission is only partially focused on trafficking.
And the military does not consider counter-narcotics a part of its
mission in Iraq, a Pentagon spokesman said.

So far, Iraq's drug trade is limited, but it has few law enforcement
barriers to keep it from growing.

"We have to keep our eye on it," said Charles, the State Department
official. "It has the potential to become a much larger problem.