WAR ON TERROR CONVERGES WITH WAR ON DRUGS

As a replacement for the Taliban looms, some officials fear opium
production could increase.

From the first days of the war in Afghanistan, U.S. officials have pointed
to a silent weapon in the desolate Afghan countryside: the poppy fields
that have spread over thousands of acres in recent years, turning the
nation into by far the largest source of opium and heroin in the world.

For the Taliban, U.S. officials said, taxes on poppy farmers and opium
dealers helped finance the movement's rogue state. For al- Qaida
terrorists, the officials warned, the opium trade might also be a way to
move money or fund attacks. At the least, Afghanistan's mix of political
radicalism and diplomatic isolation had made for a major drug threat.

Even as the fighting continues, opium farmers are returning to their
fields, tilling the ground for what had been their most reliable cash crop.
Warlords of the Northern Alliance may supplant warlords loyal to the
Taliban, drug experts say, but in the absence of a strong central
authority, it seems unlikely that the next regime will view the rewards of
the drug trade differently than did the last.

"Nothing indicates that either the Taliban or the Northern Alliance intend
to take serious action to destroy heroin or morphine-base laboratories, or
stop drug trafficking," the State Department said last spring, pointedly
spreading the blame.

Since the start of their bombing campaign, allied officials have tried to
link the new war on terror to the old war on drugs. In Washington, some
officials have likened Afghanistan to Colombia, where drug money and terror
tactics have been essential to enemies of the U.S.- backed government. In
London, Prime Minister Tony Blair reminded his countrymen that their enemy
in Afghanistan also was responsible for much of the heroin on British streets.

But as the fighting in Afghanistan continues, battle lines in the two wars
are only becoming more confused. The emerging political landscape, in which
power may be fragmented among rival groups, may prove better for
traffickers than the Taliban were. Already, the flow of opium from Afghan
stockpiles has risen sharply, with most headed north across the porous
borders of America's new allies: Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.

If U.S. officials have any cause for optimism, they probably owe it to the
Taliban.

Eighteen months ago, in an apparent bid for wider diplomatic recognition,
the Taliban's supreme leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, ordered the country's
farmers to stop growing opium poppies. And they did. Within a year, CIA
figures show, estimated opium production plunged to 81.6 tons from 4,042
tons, with most of the remainder grown in the small corner of the country
that was under Northern Alliance control.

Western law-enforcement officials were initially skeptical; many said the
ban, which was not accompanied by a crackdown on traffickers, was merely a
ploy to drive up the value of Afghanistan's huge opium stocks. Drug prices
remained stable in Europe, the Afghans' chief market.

But more important than the Taliban's sincerity may have been the fact that
drug production could be regulated at all. With little more than Omar's
decree, poppy cultivation stopped virtually overnight, with surprisingly
few reports of repression against the farmers. Had such a thing happened
almost anywhere else in the world, it probably would have been hailed as
one of the greatest achievements in the history of drug enforcement.

Taliban leaders could afford to speak softly, given their reputation for
brutally enforcing their will. But their effectiveness also owed something
to the relatively compact dimensions of the country's poppy fields - a
factor not likely to change much now. The United Nations estimates that
Afghanistan produced more than 70 percent of the world's opium supply last
year from barely 200,000 acres, a relatively tiny area, and with the labor
of perhaps 50,000 families in a population of 27 million people.

For several years, United Nations drug-control officials have said
facetiously that they could probably buy up Afghanistan's poppy crop as
cheaply as they could eradicate it. In 1998, a study by the U.N.
International Drug Control Program concluded that poppy cultivation could
be phased out over a 10-year period at a cost of about $25 million a year.

"The price tag was extremely small," said the head of the program, Pino
Arlacchi. "But most member states thought it simply wasn't worthwhile to
work inside Afghanistan."

U.S. officials considered the Afghan problem remote, if only because, as
one official put it, "It wasn't our dope." Surveys by the Drug Enforcement
Administration showed that most of the heroin in the United States came
from Colombia and Mexico.

The State Department was wary about working with the Taliban on any issue,
given its poor human-rights record and its hospitality toward Osama bin
Laden. So, too, were officials in northern Europe, even though their cities
were awash in Afghan heroin.

These days, the head of the DEA, Asa Hutchinson, has been calling
Afghanistan "a rare opportunity" for anti-drug efforts to take advantage of
successes in the war on terror. With a friendlier government in Kabul,
there will be chances to try some obvious measures to help Afghanistan's
farmers: crop-substitution programs, development aid and rebuilding
irrigation systems that were destroyed after the 1979 Soviet invasion.

But however they proceed, efforts to curtail opium production will almost
certainly cut into the livelihood of military commanders, village leaders
and others whom the United States needs as allies against terror. U.S.
drug-enforcement officials can expect a long struggle. And they will be
lucky to replicate the Taliban's success.