U.S., ALLIES EXPECT A GLUT OF AFGHAN OPIUM, HEROIN

Political instability, lawlessness and profit from cultivation, sale
of drugs has made ban ineffectual.

American officials have quietly abandoned their hopes of reducing
Afghanistan's opium production substantially this year and are now
bracing for a harvest large enough to inundate the world's heroin and
opium markets with cheap drugs.

While American and European officials have considered measures like
paying Afghan opium poppy farmers to plow under their fields, they
have concluded that continuing lawlessness and political instability
will make significant eradication all but impossible.

Instead, U.S. officials said, they will pursue a less ambitious
strategy: persuading Afghan leaders to carry out a modest eradication
program as opium poppies are harvested over the next two months, if
only to show that they were serious in declaring a ban on production
in January.

The Americans will also encourage the destruction of opium-processing
laboratories and a crackdown on brokers, while providing funds to
strengthen anti-smuggling activities by neighboring countries. The
campaign is being strongly backed and even to some extent led by
Britain, which traces nearly all the heroin on its streets to
Afghanistan.

But the continuing upheaval in and around Afghanistan will limit the
effectiveness of those strategies, U.S. and British officials admit,
making it likely that Afghanistan will produce enough opium to
dominate the world supply once again.

"The fact is, there are no institutions in large parts of the
country," said the Bush administration's drug policy director, John
P. Walters. "What we can do will be extremely limited."

Reducing the output of opium is a major goal of the international
rebuilding effort in Afghanistan.

Until the Taliban banned the cultivation of opium poppies in their
last year in power, Afghanistan produced as much as three-fourths of
the world's supply, and taxes on the drug trade were an important
source of revenue. Now, the drug profits that once flowed to local
leaders aligned with the Taliban are expected to enrich tribal
leaders and warlords whose support is vital to the American-backed
interim government.

But because opium poppy farming remains one of the few viable
economic activities, officials added, any intense eradication effort
could imperil the stability of the government and thus hamper the
military campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaida.

"The fight against terrorism takes priority," one British law
enforcement official said. "The fight against narcotics comes in
second."

On Jan. 17, with strong encouragement from the United States and the
United Nations, Afghanistan's interim leader, Hamid Karzai, announced
a new ban on poppy cultivation. His prohibition went beyond the
Taliban's decree to include processing and trafficking, which the
Taliban had tolerated and, to some extent, profited from.

While foreign officials have applauded Karzai's ban, it was issued
only after the poppies had been planted and without any viable means
of implementation.

Now, even though the opium was planted relatively late in the season
and the fields will be affected by a continuing drought, drug control
officials say the conditions are favorable enough to produce a bumper
crop.