AS POPPIES FLOURISH, DISORDER TAKES ROOT

"I think we have to broaden the definition of terrorist to include
warlords ... because they are trying to undermine the political
process and they are well armed."

Adam Bouloukos U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime

JALALABAD, Afghanistan - Some of the warlords the United States has
recruited to help fight al-Qaida and the Taliban are directing
Afghanistan's flourishing opium trade and threatening the fragile
U.S.-backed central government.

The U.S. strategy in Afghanistan has allowed some local commanders to
use profits from drug trafficking to fund their armies and amass power
under the umbrella of the Bush administration's war against terrorism.

The U.S.-backed interim president, Hamid Karzai, offers pronouncements
against drugs coupled with vows to eradicate poppies. But he doesn't
have the strength to enforce them.

"I think we have to broaden the definition of terrorist to include
warlords," said Adam Bouloukos, deputy representative with the U.N.
Office on Drugs and Crime in Kabul. "You have al-Qaida and the Taliban
and then this whole range of other characters who are just as
destructive because they are trying to undermine the political process
and they are well armed."

This year's bumper crop of poppies, from which opium and heroin are
made, shows that although the U.S.-led military coalition ousted the
hard-line Taliban regime from power almost three years ago, it has had
a harder time creating a political climate that might prevent the
terrorists from returning.

Farmers desperately need foreign aid to help make the transition to
profitable legal employment, where there are real opportunities.

A study by the aid organization German Agro Action, for instance,
found that rose oil commands about the same market value as opium. A
farmer can earn $600 to $1,000 per kilogram (about 2.2 pounds) of
opium, compared with $1 per kilogram of rice or wheat.

But with the United States and its coalition partners increasingly
preoccupied with trying to restore order and arrange a political
transition in Iraq, Karzai isn't likely to get more money or support
from Washington.

Some observers fear a repeat of what happened in the 1990s, when the
United States walked away from Afghanistan after the Soviet Union
withdrew its occupying army and the warlords' excesses contributed to
the rise of the puritanical and repressive Taliban.

Poppies are now being grown in 28 out of 32 Afghan provinces, said
Sayed Ghulfran, director of the Narcotic Control and Rehabilitation of
Afghanistan, a Jalalabad-based agency sponsored by the United Nations
that works with farmers. This year's crop is expected to yield 3,600
tons of opium, about 75 percent of the world's heroin. Last year,
about 3,400 tons of opium was produced.

The United Nations has concluded that the combined income of poppy
farmers and smugglers last year was about $2 billion, half of
Afghanistan's total economy.

"An economy that is half illegal poses huge problems," Ghulfran said.
"It's an economy that is not taxed. It's impossible to imagine and
leads to all kinds of corruption. Warlords have armies of thousands of
men. How do they pay for this?"

The obvious answer seems to be the opium trade.

Acres of poppies fill farm fields around Jalalabad, unfurling for
miles toward the horizon. Men and boys routinely walk down rows of
poppy plants in full view of passing traffic and police
checkpoints.

"We don't have any economy," said Abdul Malek, a farmer, standing in
his poppy field. "I just want to feed my family. If the government
takes this away, what will I have? I pay the police a little bit. It
is no problem."