IRAN FEARS A FLOOD OF AFGHAN DRUGS

MADANEAGHA DARBAND, Iran -- This mountain village on the Afghan border, a
cluster of adobe houses lining a rugged road, is a world away from the
paved and well-lit streets of America and Western Europe. But those worlds
could soon be much closer if the fears of Iranian officials prove true.
They predict that the war on terrorism could unleash a flood of Afghan
opium through transit areas such as this village and onward to the West.
The Taliban militia, which controls most of Afghanistan, warned that it
would unlock its opium stockpiles and send plenty of cheap narcotics to the
West if the United States followed through with threats to bomb Taliban
positions.

There are early signs this already is happening. After rising this year,
opium prices in the region have plunged to about $100 a pound in the past
month, Iranian officials say. That indicates that the drugs are flowing.
Last year, Taliban officials issued a religious decree, or fatwa, banning
opium growing on punishment of death, even though the hard-line militia
earned $15 million-$30 million a year in taxes from the crop. Before the
ban, Afghanistan grew about 90% of the world's opium poppies, from which
heroin and morphine are distilled. In recent years, about 80% of Western
Europe's heroin and about 5% of America's supply hailed from Afghanistan,
according to United Nations statistics.

U.N. officials suspect that the Taliban imposed the ban partly to drive up
opium prices, which had fallen to all-time lows.

The ban, combined with a drought, caused the harvest to fall 90% in a year.
"Opium prices here rocketed twentyfold last year" to about $350 a pound,
says Mohammad Fallah, head of Iran's drug-control program. Even so, opium
smuggling continued, using stockpiled drugs. The opposition Northern
Alliance, which controls a small part of Afghanistan, never banned opium
growing. So about 80% of this year's production is in alliance-controlled
territory, the U.N. Drug Control Program reports. "When there is a war,
everyone tries to convert everything into cash," Fallah says. His program
has spent about $2 million on seeds and fertilizer for Afghan opium farmers
trying to switch to wheat and corn crops. But when there is turmoil in the
country, he says, people are desperate for cash to pay for transportation
out of dangerous areas or to refuge in neighboring countries.

Iran's war on drugs The main road near the mountains here is a key trade
route linking Afghanistan's western city of Herat to Iran and its capital,
Tehran. That makes it a natural smuggling path. Ali Reza Nazeryafteh,
commander of mobile police in northeastern Iran, says an Afghan
motorcyclist dropped 26 pounds of opium last Wednesday as authorities
chased him. "We hear reports many smugglers are hovering in the mountains,
waiting to cross with opium," Nazeryafteh says.

"Our information is that the Taliban are not keen to enforce the ban
anymore," says Esmaeil Afshari, director of international relations for
Iran's Drug Control Headquarters. "The Taliban are not capable anymore of
enforcing it."

The United States has fought its war on Afghanistan for just 9 days. But
here along this rough front, Iranian forces have waged pitched anti-drug
battles for nearly 16 years. There are now 30,000 military and police
personnel stationed along the border, where they attempt to arrest armed
Afghan narcotics smugglers. Iran has even issued arms to locals along the
border to bolster its defense against smuggling.

Smugglers have killed more than 3,000 Iranian authorities over the years,
Iranian police officials say. Thousands of smugglers have been caught and
hundreds hanged, the United Nations says.

In the prison in Mashhad, Iran's major eastern city about 60 miles from
Madaneagha Darband on the road to Afghanistan, 802 Afghan opium smugglers
are crammed into overcrowded cells. Along a dark corridor in one section,
triple bunks are filled with men. Others squat on the floor. Several jailed
Afghan smugglers interviewed last week describe an opium trade that has
thrived through drought and desperation. "I needed money to leave because
life was so bad at home," says Vase Ghanbari, 25, a student from Herat.
Ghanbari was jailed 17 months ago for smuggling 1 pound of heroin across
the border. Unable to make ends meet, he says, he tried smuggling opium
because he wanted to leave Afghanistan. Ghanbari intended to go to Ukraine.
He bought the drugs for $375 and hoped to make a mere $50 profit in Iran.

Mohammad Baluch, 22, worked the Herat-Mashhad road as a teenager. He was
caught 3 years ago transporting 600 pounds of heroin and 350 pounds of
morphine from Afghanistan. The haul eventually could have sold for millions
of dollars in Western cities. Around the time he was arrested, Baluch says,
Taliban leaders had ordered farmers to cut production "because the price
was very low."

Baluch is serving a sentence of life plus 15 years. With his cells already
overflowing, the prison's general manager, Husain Jafari, is bracing for
hundreds more smugglers driven to trade opium during wartime hardships.

"This will definitely bring more smugglers," he says. "The chaos causes
hunger and poverty, and there is no alternative but to smuggle drugs." That
thought causes great unease among people in this mountain village east of
the Afghan border. Villagers have been victims of kidnappings by smugglers.

'I Was Sure I Would Die'

Antonio Mazzitelli, the U.N. drug-control representative to Iran, says
kidnapping is a convenient source of food and support for smugglers, who
often receive just a small cut of the profits made by bigger dealers. Reza
Chekandi, 25, is haunted by his experiences last winter, when he was held
for 92 days by opium smugglers looking for ransom money. For 3 months, he
sat chained in a house in a snowy Afghan village just across the border. He
was fed only bread and water. The ransom demand of about $6,200 was more
than 5 years' pay for Chekandi, a coal miner. "They told me to pack
potatoes, rice, everything they could keep to eat," he says, describing how
armed Afghans had dragged him and five other young men off a bus in eastern
Iran last December. The hostages were then marched about 25 miles over the
mountains into Afghanistan, carrying sacks of food.

"My guard said: 'I will kill you in the end.' So I was sure I would die,"
Chekandi says. "I was terrified." He says he watched armed men package
opium for export at the house where he was held.

Chekandi says he finally persuaded his guard to unchain him, then walked
home over the mountains. Iranian officials say about 200 of their kidnapped
citizens are still in Afghanistan.

As instability increases in Afghanistan, Iran is sure its neighbor will
turn to its one reliable source of wealth: narcotic-producing poppies.
"Opium is very vital to Afghanistan's economy," says Fallah, Iran's
drug-control chief. "It is not a lot of money for rich countries. But for
people who have nothing but bread and some water, the narcotics trade is
absolutely vital."