TRACTORS GRIND AFGHANISTAN'S OPIUM POPPIES

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Driving tractors through fields of poppy
plants, Afghan counter-narcotics agents started a major opium
eradication campaign yesterday in the heartland of the world's largest
producer of illicit drugs.

The effort comes after warnings of another bumper crop that would feed
millions of heroin addicts in Asia and the West and endanger
Afghanistan's emerging democracy.

Some 1,000 heavily armed police and soldiers guarded the drug agents
because Taliban insurgents have threatened to defend the poppy farms,
said provincial administrator Ghulam Muhiddin.

However, there were no reports of violence as about 100 tractors moved
across the poppy fields, grinding up the young plants in southern
Helmand province's Dishu district, he said.

The eradication, part of a U.S.- and British-funded initiative, comes
two days after the Afghan government and the United Nations warned
that they expect cultivation of opium poppies to increase across large
swaths of the country this year.