AFGHAN POPPIES TO RETURN

Farmers Plan To Plant Opium Cash Crop With Taliban Out Of Power

KARIZ, Afghanistan -- No one could be more delighted about the departure of
the Taliban regime than the opium poppy growers here in eastern Afghanistan.

In July 2000, the Taliban's leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, issued an edict
banning poppy cultivation across Afghanistan, then the world's largest
producer of the flower pod used to make heroin.

For years, the Taliban had used taxes on drugs to finance its military.
That all changed, however, with Omar's eight-line message. According to a
recent report by the UN Drug Control Program, the decree brought raw opium
production in Afghanistan to a virtual halt, dropping from 3,276 tons to
only 185 tons in one year.

But now that the Taliban has retreated to the mountains, there is an
eagerness among farmers here in the irrigated lowlands south of Jalalabad
in the Nangarhar Province.

Farmer Ahmed Shah and his neighbors began fertilizing and tilling their
small plots of land, preparing to plant poppy seeds that will be harvested
next April, processed into heroin in neighboring Pakistan and delivered to
overseas markets.

"I can make 10 times more with poppy than I can with wheat," Shah said as
two teen-age boys turned the soil nearby.

The farmers of eastern Afghanistan are aware of the epidemic they feed with
their beautiful flowers. They see the hollow-eyed addicts in the bazaars of
Peshawar when they travel to Pakistan.

"We know we are creating addicts," Shah said. "The only reason we are doing
this is because we are poor. If I could find another job, I would stop
growing poppies."

Samsul Haq, deputy director of the Nangarhar Drug Control and Coordination
Office, estimates that before the Taliban edict, 85 percent of the
Jalalabad agricultural economy was driven by opium production.

"This is a great opportunity for poppy growers," Haq said. "The Taliban is
gone. There is confusion about what kind of new order is coming in. The
farmers are free to plant poppies."

Haq said that unless poppy production is checked by massive foreign aid to
provide the farmers with an alternative, Afghanistan is almost certain to
return to its dubious distinction as the world's top supplier by next summer.

The Taliban ban on poppy cultivation -- instituted four years after the
repressive regime came to power -- had an instant, devastating effect on
the local farmers. Nangarhar province is the second-biggest producer of
opium poppies in Afghanistan, topped only by Helmand province west of the
Taliban spiritual center, Kandahar.

"I took an advance on opium before the ban," Saifuddin said. "I was forced
to sell 12 "jeribs" of land to pay it back." Another farmer, Abdul Shakoor,
70, said he lost the equivalent of $6,500 because of the ban.