AFGHAN DRUG FIGHT STIRS UNREST

Tribal Leaders Want Poppy Fields Spared

Kabul, Afghanistan --- Influential elders from the nation's opium-producing
provinces Wednesday warned the government against trying to eradicate the
poppy crop, which is almost ready to harvest.

The testy confrontation was the most serious internal challenge so far to
interim Afghan leader Hamid Karzai.

Tribal leaders and commanders from Helmand, Paktia and Nangahar provinces
demanded "leniency" in implementing the policy, a senior government
official said, because so many of the area's farmers are unwilling to
destroy a lucrative crop.

Karzai needs to curb opium production to win the backing of the
international community, but doing so would undercut his position at home,
where local warlords still rule much of the country.

In an interview Wednesday, Interior Minister Yunus Qanooni said his
ministry was determined to continue its effort.

"There are some people who opposed our plans" to eradicate the harvest "and
don't want us to force them to do it," Qanooni said. "But the U.N. and the
international community demand that we take strong action against drug
trafficking."

Qanooni said he is willing to sit down with local officials "to find a
solution that prevents the smuggling and cultivation of opium. We are
trying. We want to find a way so that people are not damaged."

Two years ago, Afghanistan supplied about 70 percent of the world's opium,
according to CIA statistics, until the Taliban leadership cracked down on
cultivation.

After the Taliban regime collapsed last fall, many farmers who had once
cultivated poppies rushed back into the fields. Traditionally, Afghanistan
has been the source of much of the heroin sold in Europe and the Middle East.

Last week, the Karzai government unveiled a plan to pay farmers about $500
per acre to destroy their poppy crops, about a quarter of what they could
earn on the market. If they refused to comply, the government said, it
would send police into the fields to tear up their plants.

Many people doubt that Karzai's government can implement the edict, months
after poor farmers planted their crops, and provincial officials pleaded
with him Wednesday for "a looser policy and for leniency," the senior
government official said.

The provincial officials warned Karzai they would not be able to enforce a
strict edict to cut the crop out of the fields, because of local opposition.

"They said farmers were very unhappy with the decision [to eradicate the
harvest] just now, at the end of the season, and that the money being paid
them was not enough," the official said.

The United Nations and major international donors, especially Britain and
the European Union, insist that Afghanistan make a serious effort to limit
the harvest of opium-producing poppies.