TALIBAN RULERS BAR AFGHAN FARMING OF MAIN HEROIN SOURCE

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

For 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 regime has 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.

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.

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 U.N. 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 last 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,"
he said.

The Taliban have threatened to jail anyone who defies the ban and already
22 farmers 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.

The Taliban says the outside world should now 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," said
Sayed.

"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.' "