HEROIN TRADE BOOMS IN AFGHANISTAN

New Wealth Helps Terrorists Rebuild, Threatens Neighbors

DUSHANBE, Tajikistan - Heroin producers in Afghanistan, some of the
principal financiers of Al-Qaida and other terrorists, have never before
been so brazen or so wealthy.

With a bumper crop of opium poppies under cultivation, Afghan narco-barons
have begun stamping their brand names on the 2.2-pound bags of heroin they
smuggle out of Central Asia to buyers in Moscow, Amsterdam, London and New
York.

Sacks of high-quality Afghan heroin seized this month in Tajikistan carried
the trademarks "Super Power" and "555." Some of the sacks, which were
hidden inside foil-lined containers of instant cappuccino mix, even
included the addresses of the labs in Afghanistan where the heroin had been
refined.

A Western-led campaign against opium growing and heroin laboratories has
been a wholesale failure, and drug-control experts say the number of
processing facilities in Afghanistan has exploded over the past year. The
trade and huge sums of money involved threaten to undermine vulnerable
bordering states such as Tajikistan.

"There's absolutely no threat to the labs inside Afghanistan," said Maj.
Avaz Yuldashov of the Tajikistan Drug Control Agency. "Our intelligence
shows there are 400 labs making heroin there, and 80 of them are situated
right along our border."

Some 200,000 acres of opium poppies have been planted in Afghanistan and
the country's late-summer harvest will produce three-fourths of the world's
heroin. That will mean further billions for growers, smugglers, corrupt
officials and Afghan warlords.

It's also likely to mean a windfall of tithes to Al-Qaida and its Islamist
brethren now said to be regrouping in the mountains of Central Asia.

"Drug trafficking from Afghanistan is the main source of support for
international terrorism now," Yuldashov said. "That's quite clear."

But in recent congressional testimony about heroin flow out of Afghanistan,
Drug Enforcement Administration head Karen Tandy spoke only of "potential
links" and "possible relationships" between Afghan traffickers and
terrorists. Drug agents in Central Asia say they are baffled by Tandy's
hedging.

"The connection is absolutely obvious to us," said Col. Alexander
Kondratiyev, a senior Russian officer who has served with border guards in
Tajikistan for nearly a decade. "Drugs, weapons, ammunition, terrorism,
more drugs, more terrorism -- it's a closed circle."

That circle has profound and ominous implications for the U.S.-led fight
against international terrorism. Regional diplomats, aid workers and law
enforcement officials fear that the expanding drug trade will destabilize
one of the "stans," the five former Soviet republics that gained
independence after the U.S.S.R. collapsed.

They worry about the emergence of a Central Asian narco-state, a country
dominated by the drug economy and effectively controlled by a heroin mafia
with roots in Afghanistan and ties to Al-Qaida and regional Islamists.

"We have a deep responsibility to keep these Central Asian republics from
becoming failed states," said a Western diplomat in Dushanbe who spoke on
condition of anonymity. "Look what happened in Afghanistan. It was a failed
state -- and it became a nest for terrorists.

At particular risk is Tajikistan, a desperately poor, predominantly Muslim
nation of 7 million.

Tajikistan produces almost no opium or heroin of its own, but it has become
a natural pathway for traffickers because of its 900-mile border with
Afghanistan.

The Tajik Drug Control Agency -- outmanned, outgunned and poorly equipped
- -- said it managed to seize nearly six tons of heroin from traffickers last
year. Senior commanders estimate they catch about 20 percent of the
traffic. Some analysts think it's probably about half that much.

Tajikistan, isolated and landlocked, has almost no industrial economy other
than a state-controlled aluminum smelter. Foreign investment is minuscule;
not a single American firm is operating in the country.

The national budget is barely $300 million a year, a pittance compared with
the size of the drug economy. The heroin trade alone, Yuldashov said, is 10
times as big.

That kind of disparity leaves many Tajiks vulnerable to corruption and
compromise by wealthy drug mafiosi, especially when the average salary is
$10 a month and 80 percent of the population lives below the poverty line.
A single trip as a drug courier can feed a Tajik family for a month.

Another worrisome development is in the offing for Tajikistan: Next month,
along the Afghan border, Russia will begin withdrawing 2,200 border-control
officers who have been stationed here since the Soviet era. Their departure
and the loss of Russian funding could further undermine Tajikistan's
ability to defend itself from Afghan drug traffickers.