U.S. RENEWS BID TO DESTROY OPIUM POPPIES IN AFGHANISTAN

KABUL, Afghanistan -- After the biggest opium harvest in
Afghanistan's history, American officials have renewed efforts to
persuade the government here to begin spraying herbicide on opium
poppies, and they have found some supporters within President Hamid
Karzai's administration, officials of both countries said.

Since early this year, Mr. Karzai has repeatedly declared his
opposition to spraying the poppy fields, whether by crop-dusting
airplanes or by eradication teams on the ground.

But Afghan officials said that the Karzai administration is now
re-evaluating that stance. Some proponents within the government are
even pushing a trial program of ground spraying that could begin
before the harvest next spring.

The issue has created sharp divisions in the Afghan government, among
its Western allies and even between American officials of different
agencies. The matter is fraught with political danger for Mr. Karzai,
whose hold on power is weak.

Many spraying advocates, including officials at the White House and
the State Department, view herbicides as critical to curbing
Afghanistan's poppy crop, officials said. That crop and the opium and
heroin it produces have become a major source of revenue for the
Taliban insurgency.

But officials said the skeptics -- who include American military and
intelligence officials and European diplomats in Afghanistan -- fear
that any spraying of American-made chemicals over Afghan farms would
be a boon to Taliban propagandists. Some of these officials say that
the political cost could be especially high if the herbicide destroys
food crops that farmers often plant alongside their poppies.

"There has always been a need to balance the obvious greater
effectiveness of spray against the potential for losing hearts and
minds," Thomas A. Schweich, the assistant secretary of state for
international narcotics issues, said in an interview last week in
Washington. "The question is whether that's manageable. I think that it is."

Bush administration officials say they will respect whatever decision
the Afghan government makes on the matter. Crop-eradication efforts,
they insist, are only part of a broad, new counter-narcotics strategy
that will include increased efforts against traffickers, more aid for
legal agriculture and development, and greater military support for
the drug fight.

Behind the scenes, however, Bush administration officials have been
pressing the Afghan government to at least allow the trial spray of
glyphosate, a commonly used weed-killer, current and former American
officials said. Ground spraying would likely bring only a modest
improvement over the manual destruction of poppy plants, but
officials who support the strategy hope it would reassure Afghans
about the safety of the herbicide and make eradication possible.
Aerial spraying, they add, may be the only way to make a serious
impact on opium production while the Taliban continues to dominate
parts of Southern Afghanistan.

On Sunday, officials said, a State Department crop-eradication expert
briefed key members of Mr. Karzai's cabinet about the effectiveness
and safety of glyphosate. The expert, Charles S. Helling, a senior
scientific adviser to the department's Bureau of International
Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, met with, among others, the
ministers of public health and agriculture, both of whom have opposed
the use of herbicides to eradicate poppy, an Afghan official said.

For all the controversy over herbicide use, there is no debate that
Afghanistan's drug problem is out of control. The country now
produces 93 percent of the world's opiates, according to United
Nations estimates. Its traffickers are also processing more opium
into heroin base there, a shift that has helped to increase
Afghanistan's drug revenues exponentially since the American-led
invasion in 2001.

A United Nations report in August documented a 17 percent rise in
poppy cultivation from 2006 to 2007, and a 34 percent rise in opium
production. Perhaps more importantly for the NATO-led effort to
stabilize Afghanistan, taxes on the growers and traffickers have
become a major source of financing for the Taliban.

The problem is most acute in the southern province of Helmand, a
Taliban stronghold. Helmand produced nearly 4,400 metric tons of
opium this year, nearly half of the country's total output, according
to United Nations statistics.

Moreover, as Afghanistan's opium production has soared, the
government's eradication efforts have faltered. Federal and
provincial eradication teams -- using sticks, sickles and
animal-drawn plows -- cut down about 47,000 acres of poppy fields
this year, 24 percent more than last year but still less than 9
percent of the country's total poppy crop.

And even that effort had to be negotiated plot by plot with growers.
Powerful and politically connected landowners were able to protect
their crops while smaller, weaker farmers were made the targets. The
eradication program was so spotty that it did little to discourage
farmers from cultivating the crop, American and European officials said.

"The eradication process over the past five years has not worked,"
Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the United Nations Office
on Drugs and Crime, said in an interview. "This year, it was a farce."

The Americans have pushed the Afghan government to eradicate with
glyphosate for at least two years. According to current and former
American officials, the subject has been raised with President Karzai
by President Bush; Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; Stephen J.
Hadley, the national security adviser; and John P. Walters, the
director of national drug-control policy.

American officials thought they had the Karzai administration's
support late last year to begin a small-scale pilot program for
ground spraying in several provinces. But that plan was derailed in
January after an American-educated deputy minister of public health
presented health and environmental concerns about glyphosate at a
meeting of the Karzai cabinet, Afghan and American officials said.

Since then, Mr. Karzai has said he opposes spraying of any kind.

"President Karzai has categorically rejected that spraying will
happen," Farooq Wardak, Afghanistan's minister of state for
parliamentary affairs, said in a recent interview. "The collateral
damage of that will be huge."

Yet in the weeks since the latest United Nations drug report, the
Bush administration's lobbying appears to have made new headway. The
administration has already won the backing of several members of Mr.
Karzai's government and the spray advocates here are now trying to
swing other key Afghan officials and Mr. Karzai himself, one
high-level Afghan official said

"We are working to convince the key ministers and President Karzai to
accept this strategy," said the official, who supports spraying but
asked not to be identified because of the issue's political
sensitivity. "We want to convince them to show some power. The
government has to show its power in the remote provinces."

General Khodaidad, Afghanistan's acting minister of counter-narcotics
(who, like many Afghans, goes by only one name), said in an interview
last week that ground spraying is under careful consideration by the
Afghan government. A high-level official of the Karzai administration
said he believed some spraying might take place during this growing
season, which begins in several weeks.

The American government contends that glyphosate is one of the
world's safest herbicides.

One noted supporters of glyphosate as a counter-narcotics tool is the
American ambassador in Kabul, William B. Wood, who arrived in April
after a four-year posting as ambassador to Colombia. There, Mr. Wood
oversaw the American-financed counter-narcotics program, Plan
Colombia, which relies heavily on the aerial spraying of coca, the
raw material for cocaine.

Mr. Wood has even offered to have himself sprayed with glyphosate, as
one of his predecessors in Colombia once did, to prove its safety, a
United States Embassy official in Kabul said.

But among European diplomats here, a far greater concern than any
environmental or health dangers of chemical eradication is the
potential for political fallout that could lead to more violence and
instability.

These diplomats worry particularly that aerial spraying would kill
food crops that some farmers plant with their poppies. European
officials add that any form of spraying could be cast by the Taliban
as American chemical warfare against the Afghan peasantry.

The British have been so concerned that on the eve of Mr. Karzai's
trip to Camp David in August, Prime Minister Gordon Brown called
President Bush and asked him not to pressure the Afghan premier to
use herbicides, according to several diplomats here.

In something of a reversal of traditional roles, officials of the
Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency have also challenged the
White House and State Department support for spraying, raising
concerns about its potential to destabilize the Karzai government,
current and former American officials said.

American officials who support herbicide use do not dismiss such
concerns. They say an extensive public-information campaign would
have to be carried out in conjunction with any spraying effort to
dispel fears about the chemical's impacts.

Mr. Schweich, the assistant secretary of state, emphasized that a new
American counter-narcotics strategy for Afghanistan, introduced in
August, went far beyond eradication. He noted that it would increase
punishments and rewards, including large amounts of development aid,
to move farmers away from poppy cultivation. It also calls for more
forceful eradication, interdiction and law-enforcement efforts, and
closer coordination of counter-narcotics and counterinsurgency
efforts, which until now have been pursued separately.

"We will do what the Afghan government wants to do," Mr. Schweich
said, referring to the use of herbicides. The Bush administration, he
added, simply wants to ensure that the Afghans "have all the facts on
the table."