TALIBAN'S POPPY BAN PUTS AFGHAN FARMERS IN A BIND

KHOGIANI, Pakistan -- Zulmai Khan has planted wheat instead of poppies this
year, and expects his income to plunge from $10,000 to $400.

=46or Khan, it was switch or go to jail. Like many other Afghan farmers, he
finds himself at the sharp end of an edict from the country's Taliban
rulers, who have decreed it's not Islamic to farm poppies for heroin
production.

"Of course it's because we are afraid," Khan said angrily of his decision to
comply. "That is the only reason. It wasn't against Islam before, so how can
it be against Islam now?

"It was big profits for us. Now what are we supposed to do? They have spies
everywhere. We'll go to jail," he added.

The Taliban have aroused Western disapproval for its harsh strictures on the
freedom of women, as well as for harboring Osama bin Laden, whom the United
States accuses of running a worldwide terrorism network.

Its uncompromising attitude toward drugs may win it some points, but it also
puts Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar's credibility on the line.

If spring comes and the fields are awash with crimson poppies, the reclusive
leader's claim of absolute authority will be debunked.

But if his edict is obeyed, it will cut off the world's biggest source of
heroin and reinforce the Taliban's hold over a country ravaged by 21 years
of war and lawlessness.

"I tell you, I think it can be done," said Shams-ul-Haq Sayed, an officer of
the Taliban drug control office in Jalalabad, capital of the eastern
opium-growing province of Nangarhar.

He pointed to the Taliban's success in controlling the number of weapons
openly carried in the streets.

"Twenty years ago, I would have thought it impossible to take weapons away
from people," he said. "But look in every city where the Taliban are in
control: People don't carry guns," though there is no ban on weapons
possession.

Opium is converted into heroin in laboratories tucked away in remote tribal
regions of Afghanistan and smuggled out through Pakistan and Central Asia,
according to United Nations reports.

Last year, Afghan farmers produced more than 4,000 tons of opium -- more
than the rest of the world put together, according to the United Nations.

The edict in July was typical of the way the Taliban run the country in the
absence of any democratic procedure or public input: sudden, harsh, and
irrevocable.

"We were surprised," said Mizan-ur-Rehman Yuzufzai, a U.N. Drug Control
Program officer in eastern Nangarhar province. "We had been talking to the
Taliban, but we did not expect a total ban. But now they are bound by it."

The Taliban have threatened to jail anyone who defies the ban, and 22
farmers already have been arrested in Nangarhar province alone, according to
Sayed. The Taliban are keeping farmers in jail until they agree to destroy
their crop, he said, and if they refuse, the crop will be destroyed and the
cost of its destruction charged to the farmer.

Stories circulate about farmers unsuccessfully defying the edict. A farmer
who bragged of challenging it is said to have been arrested and paraded
around his village with his face blackened to humiliate him.

In the village of Mimla, the headman and Muslim cleric have been warned they
will be jailed if anyone in their village is caught growing poppies.

Sher Gul, the headman, said he sends out patrols each dawn to make sure the
edict is obeyed.

Many opium farmers are deeply in debt to businessmen from whom they borrow
against their poppy crop. Khan, for instance, said he owes about $850.

The Taliban say the outside world should help prevent impoverishment of the
farmers.

"We have done what we can. We have banned poppies. Now . . . if they really
want to combat drugs and if they are really honest, they will help," Sayed
said.

"Whether they like or they don't like the Taliban, it doesn't matter. It is
the people. They can give through the United Nations," he said.

But the ban unhappily coincides with the United Nations' decision to close
its drug control program in eastern Nangarhar province, citing lack of
funding.

"Now our credibility with the people is under question," said Zalmi Sherzad,
a program official. "They will say to us, 'You have no right to tell us not
to grow. You give us nothing.' "