AFGHAN OPIUM CROP TO SURGE

International Drug Officials Ponder Ways To Stymie Production

International drug control authorities believe that opium poppy
production in Afghanistan will increase dramatically next year and
are debating whether to pay or force growers to destroy their spring
crops.

Afghan officials said that controlling opium farming is one of newly
installed leader Hamid Karzai's top three priorities, and a senior
U.S. official said it is now a "major, front-burner'' issue for the
Bush administration.

But officials agree it will be difficult to stop opium growing,
particularly in sections of the country where the new government has
limited authority -- such as Helmand province, the world's most
productive poppy-growing region.

"Afghans leaving the country have reported that farmers are going
back to poppy cultivation,'' said Mohammed Amirkhizi, a senior policy
adviser in the U.N. Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention in
Vienna.

He said the United Nations has not been able to verify the extent of
poppy farming, but that "our expectation is that production will go
back up to (the level of) previous years. The international community
is extremely concerned.''

Two years ago, Afghanistan produced more than 70 percent of the
world's opium, which is used to make heroin. But the Taliban banned
poppy farming last year -- whether the goal was to halt the business
in response to international pressure or to drive up prices remains
unclear -- and this spring's crop dropped by more than 90 percent.

Now, the expectation that poppy production will skyrocket has set off
an international battle over how to respond. While some experts
advocate a one-time buyback of the spring crop, others want to rely
primarily on law enforcement. All seem to agree that in addition to
punishing regions where poppy growing continues, international donors
should reward regions that fight opium production, providing them
with generous funds for economic development.

The new Afghan government is committed under an agreement negotiated
in Bonn this month to work aggressively to eliminate poppy growing,
but officials say it will take time. Not only is opium the largest
cash crop in the country, but many farmers rely on loans from drug
traffickers to pay for their fall planting and survive through the
winter. Because the poppies were planted in October and November, the
farmers have already taken those loans and will have no way to repay
them if they don't harvest their fields.

The Washington representative of the Afghan government, Haron Amin,
said last week that he expected Karzai to announce a renewed ban on
poppy growing immediately, but Karzai did not mention it when he was
sworn in on Saturday. Other drug control officials said the new
prohibition was still under negotiation.

With the change in government in Afghanistan, some senior Bush
administration officials have proposed a one-time buyback of opium as
an emergency measure. However, a U.S. official involved with the
issue said the idea met stiff opposition at international meetings on
Afghan opium. He said many officials wanted to rely on law
enforcement and on pressuring growers to destroy their crops.

"We are not considering any kind of a buyback, and no illicit crop
subsidies,'' said the U.S. official, who argued that paying for drugs
- -- even to destroy them -- could set a dangerous precedent. ''

While the United Nations and the United States have agreed in
principle to provide billions of dollars to rebuild Afghanistan and
to help farmers leave the poppy-growing business, that assistance
will be long-term and most likely will not be widely available next
spring, the official said. Agencies are looking next year to
approaches such as reducing the pool of migrant labor available to
harvest the poppies and extract the opium by providing laborers with
jobs on road construction and other public works programs.

But others believe more unconventional approaches will be needed in
the spring if the poppy crop is as large as expected. Knut Ostby, the
U.N. Development Program's representative in Afghanistan, said that
his agency and others tried for years to encourage Afghan poppy
farmers to grow other crops through economic incentives, but that it
was only the strict Taliban prohibition that worked.

"Some form of compensation seems to be the only way to take care of
next year's crop,'' Ostby said. "To have farmers otherwise not
harvest their crop would be very difficult for them, and unlikely to
work.''

A one-time buyback would be risky because it could encourage farmers
to grow poppies in the future, he said. "But the reality is, there
are not so many other options right now.''