A CLOUD OF RUIN HANGS OVER POPPY CROP

Afghanistan: Growers Vow To Fight Ban. 'Yes, We Know It's Poison, But
We Have To Feed Our Families.'

ARABAN, Afghanistan -- A bountiful spring harvest has come to
Nangarhar province. A gorgeous carpet of pink and violet flowers has
sprung from the red earth, stretching for miles past fields of young
green wheat and white-topped onions.

These are opium poppies, the first crop since the Taliban outlawed
opium growing in July 2000, reducing the crop by a stunning 96%. This
is also the first poppy crop since the interim Afghan government was
installed in December, and it has precipitated a crisis in Nangarhar.

In a matter of days, the poppies will be ready for extraction of the
gummy gray opium paste that is processed into heroin in Pakistan and
sent via Iran and Turkey to addicts in Europe. But the Kabul
government, under pressure from the United States and Britain, has
threatened to destroy the entire harvest unless farmers accept token
cash payments to plow under their poppies. Nangarhar's opium farmers,
a contentious lot, have responded with a volatile mixture of fear and
defiance.

"Destroy my crop. Hah! The government wouldn't dare," said Abdul Ali,
a stout farmer of 25 who says he has invested 120,000 rupees, or
about $2,000, in his six acres of poppies here in the lush Sukh Rod
(Red River) valley southwest of Jalalabad. "If they try to touch one
poppy, there'll be big trouble, I promise you."

Farmers have barricaded roads, stoned passing cars, blocked returning
refugees and shot dead a provincial functionary who dared set foot on
a poppy field. Some Afghans speculate that opium had something to do
with a bomb that killed five people Monday in a failed attempt in
Jalalabad to assassinate the country's defense minister--the man who
would send in soldiers to destroy poppies.

Nangarhar is the country's second-largest opium-producing province
after Helmand in the south (where eight protesting farmers were
killed by government forces Sunday and authorities began destroying
poppy crops Wednesday). Nangarhar is also the source of the
finest-quality opium paste. The opium trade is the engine of the
local economy, generating millions of dollars for wealthy drug
traffickers and smaller sums for thousands of farmers and their
illiterate laborers.

Government's Offer Is Deemed an Insult

Farmers say they are insulted by the government's offer of $250 per
jerib, about half an acre. They say they earn at least $2,000 from
the opium paste produced on one jerib--many times the income from
wheat or corn. On Wednesday, the government increased the offer to
$350 per jerib.

For Nangarhar's political bosses and military commanders, opium is a
delicate subject. According to the farmers, top officials profit
handsomely from the drug trade either by leasing their considerable
land holdings to opium farmers, growing poppies themselves, or
charging fees to permit opium trafficking through their territories.

There is nothing furtive or shameful about growing opium poppies
here. They grow openly on corner lots in Jalalabad, the provincial
capital. People plant poppies in their gardens.

The other day, Haji Abdul Qadir, the provincial governor, sat slumped
in a padded chair inside the governor's palace, sweat glistening on
his tanned bald head. He had just emerged from a meeting with hostile
farmers--tall, bearded, sunburned men in dirt-streaked robes who had
upbraided him.

"The farmers say we are taking bread from their mouths," Qadir said,
a plaintive edge in his voice. "But what can I do. I am obligated to
obey the government. If it was up to me, I'd say begin the harvest
tomorrow."

The region's security chief, the urbane and polished Haji Mohammed
Zaman, sat wearily in his orange grove, lamenting his fate. He had
enough problems maintaining day-to-day security on his troubled patch
of earth without the added burden of an opium war.

Zaman too had been chastised by the farmers. And now, he said,
American drug agents had joined the U.S. Special Forces soldiers
living in his compound. He sensed trouble.

"The farmers are right," Zaman said. "Two hundred fifty dollars a
jerib--it's nothing. But the orders have come, and we must obey
orders."

It so happens that the farmers who produce the country's finest opium
hail from Zaman's home district of Khogiani near Tora Bora. And it so
happens that some of the biggest and most impressive poppy fields in
the region surround the country estate of his good friend, Qadir.

"That," the governor said nonchalantly, "belongs to another person."

Qadir and Zaman seem intent on filibustering the issue to death,
scheduling an endless series of meetings with farmers until after the
harvest is actually in.

Once the paste is extracted, the poppies are just weeds. Then, the
farmers say, the government is welcome to them.

New Ban on Crop Was Poorly Timed

Timing is everything with opium. The Taliban announced its 2000 ban
in July, three months before the November planting season. But the
interim government announced its ban in January, after the crop had
been planted.

At planting time, most farmers borrow huge sums from the mafia-like
syndicates of Pakistanis and Afghans who buy and transport opium
paste. They must pay for seeds, fertilizer, irrigation, weeding and
workers to tend the labor-intensive plants. At harvest time, they pay
back the loans at 50% interest.

In the idyllic Sukh Rod valley, white-bearded Mohammed Sohbat, 57,
stood atop a haycock and admired his crimson poppies swaying in the
soft spring breeze. He listed every last borrowed rupee he had spent
on seeds, weeding, fertilizer and the like for his 14 jeribs. He
rattled off the ages of his 13 children.

"So you see," he said, "I have a very big investment. If the
government destroys my poppies now, when my money is almost in my
hands, they will be killing my family. I will not let that happen."

Sohbat was trying to rush the harvest. He was up early the other day,
scratching tiny wounds into a poppy pod with a sharp, comb-like tool
called a nashter. The wounds bled a sticky pink resin. Sohbat studied
it and shook his head. It was not quite time to collect the paste
with his metal scraper, or rambee.

"Not yet," he said. "Another two days, maybe three."

Sohbat and other farmers say they detested the Taliban, which
enforced its ban through intimidation and one-year jail terms. They
were overjoyed when Qadir and Zaman returned from exile as the
Taliban was driven from Jalalabad on Nov. 13. Within days, the
farmers were planting poppies and lining up at the governor's palace
to pay homage to Qadir.

Now they wonder. "Is this government just putting on a big show for
the Americans." asked Said Ehsan Sadat, owner of six lush acres of
poppies.

Actually, Qadir said, the British are applying most of the pressure.
Afghan opium ends up as heroin in Europe. The Americans, whose heroin
comes from Colombia and Mexico, are more concerned with killing off
Taliban and Al Qaeda survivors and propping up the Kabul government,
a Western diplomat told reporters.

Qadir said the Western powers talk a good game about drugs but don't
always deliver. Under Western pressure in the early 1990s, in his
first term as governor, Qadir cut poppy production 25%. But then, he
said, the promised Western financial and technical assistance never
materialized.

In 1995, Qadir delivered a bitter speech that is fondly remembered by
farmers. He told them to grow poppies from their rooftops and
flowerpots.

Today, the farmers have other allies.

Mohammed Yunis Sidiky, a United Nations anti-drug worker, called the
government offer "feeble." He added: "The farmers will commit suicide
before they accept it."

Maulavi Fazalhadi Shinwari, a Koranic scholar who serves as chief
justice for the interim administration, said of his government's
offer: "Paying $250 for something that's worth much more--that's not
justice."

Nor is growing opium haram, or forbidden by Islamic law, Shinwari
said, because "we make an exception for exceptional circumstances,
such as people living in poverty."

Maulavi Shafiullah Miakhel, the mullah for the poppy-growing Sukh Rod
valley, sighed and said, "If only there were some alternative cash
crops instead of poppy."

The farmers know that their opium brings misery and despair to
Western cities, as well as to some in Pakistan and Iran.

"Yes, we know it's poison, but we have to feed our families," said
Sadat, the grower.

His fellow Sukh Rod valley farmer, Abdul Ali, interrupted him and
said: "We prefer to think of it as growing medicine. What do you call
it. Yes, morphine."

Poison or medicine, it is certain to be the finest crop in two
seasons. The U.N. Drug Control Program estimates the 2002 Afghan
harvest at between 110,000 and 160,000 acres, if not interrupted--far
larger than the more than 18,000 acres cultivated under the Taliban
ban last year and about what the country produced in the mid-1990s.

"And the quality is higher this year because of the good rainfall,"
said Samsul Haq, the provincial drug-eradication administrator under
the Taliban, who delivered the edict from Taliban leader Mullah
Mohammed Omar banning poppy production.

Now it is the American-backed interim government delivering the
edict, with the job falling to security chief Zaman. In his orange
grove, Zaman sucked on a cigarette and exhaled slowly. "This isn't
going to be easy," he said.