POOR AFGHANS GROW ADDICTED TO PROFITS FROM THE POPPY

The fields of Khogiani may look dry and barren now but by April they will
be alive with colour. It will not be the gold of wheat, traditionally
Afghanistan's main crop, however - instead they will be filled with the
swaying red, white and purple heads of opium poppies.

According to the annual UN drug control programme survey, Khogiani
district, near Jalalabad, is the fourth most productive poppy growing area
in Afghanistan with 5,338 hectares (13,340 acres) turned over to drugs. The
crop is of a very high quality with 7.5kg of opium yielding 1kg of pure
heroin.

Mohammed Ibrahim, the headmaster of the village school, says proudly: "Very
good heroin. Ours is the best in Afghanistan."

Once wheat was the main crop but the devastation of 20 years of war have
made the lure of opium hard to resist.

This year's harvest was a bumper one - the UN estimated that Afghanistan
produced 4,581 tons of opium, a 117% increase on last year, although
admittedly 1998's crop was damaged by hail, and poppy cultivation expanded
to 27 new districts.

Next year promises an even larger crop, with the ruling Taliban militia in
a defiant mood after the UN imposed sanctions last week for its refusal to
hand over the Saudi fugitive, Osama bin Laden.

In Khogiani this season, they are hardly planting anything else. Even a
respected citizen like Mr Ibrahim says: "The government sometimes says it
is going to ban heroin in Afghanistan, but if people can't find another way
to support their family, no one is going to be able to stop people growing
opium. It would lead to civil war."

The father of seven says he knows heroin is harmful but his salary as a
head teacher is less than $10 a month. "How can I feed my family? I know it
is forbidden in Islam but I have no choice," he adds.

In Khogiani district, the entire economy is built on poppy - next May's
harvest is used as a collateral against loans taken in the autumn, and
there is a brisk trade in poppy futures.

When opium prices peaked this year, the luckier farmers of Khogiani earned
40,000 Pakistani rupees a kilo (A3500 a kilo). Those forced to take on
advance on the May crop had to settle for A3150.

Officially, poppy cultivation, trafficking and the use of heroin is illegal
according to the Islamic code of Sharia law, but there is only token
enforcement of the ban.

Although the Taliban last month urged farmers to turn a third of their
fields over to food crops, even government ministers concede that people
have little real choice.

"This is the only way the people of Afghanistan can feed themselves," says
Sher Mohammed Abbas Stanikzai, the deputy health minister in Kabul. "If the
world does not help us, and does not try to solve our problems, opium
production will increase. There is no doubt."

In Khogiani, the farmers are well aware of crop substitution programmes and
other efforts by the UN to wean them from opium. But they say more must be
offered to get them to switch, such as a dam to collect the spring run-off
from the nearby mountains, and maybe a factory of some sort to give jobs to
the young.

Meanwhile, poppy has become their life. The UN says land values now are
determined by suitability for poppy production, rather than wheat, the
country's staple food.

During the brief harvest season, when the bulb of each flower must be
scored with a special wooden tool each evening, and the sap scooped up with
a spatula in the morning, even the humblest of farmers needs seven or eight
extra hands.

Labourers command wages of about A33 a day, plus food. By Afghan
standards, where civil servants earn around about A38 a month, it is a
fortune.

But it is not the farmers who are becoming rich. They live in mud houses
without electricity or running water, the bottom of a chain of growers,
local smugglers, heroin factory owners, and international traffickers who
will eventually take the refined product over the Afghan border.

Khogiani's farmers say their opium will end up in Ghani Khel, near the
Pakistani border, where it will be transformed into heroin. Iran and
Turkmenistan are also important trafficking routes.

They know they are part of a deadly trade that leads from their fields to
the streets of Europe but say they cannot afford to stop.