HEROIN TRADE IN FULL BLOOM FOR AFGHAN POPPY FARMERS

JALALABAD, Afghanistan - Some of the Afghan warlords the United States has
recruited to help fight Al Qaeda and the Taliban are directing
Afghanistan's flourishing opium trade and threatening the country's
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.

U.S.-backed interim President Hamid Karzai offers pronouncements against
drugs coupled with vows to eradicate poppies that he doesn't have the
strength to enforce.

"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 Qaeda 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 administration from power almost three years ago, it's 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 is the opium trade.