DRUG CROPS BLAMED ON AID

Poppy Growers Say Narcotics Cultivation Caused By Drought And Food Programs

DARE NOOR, Afghanistan (CP) -- Facing government-imposed eradication of
their precious crops, Afghan poppy growers blame drought and international
food aid -- Canada's included -- for their decision to feed the world
narcotics trade. Interim President Hamid Karzai says he will dispatch
Afghan forces this weekend to take down thousands of hectares of poppies
worth billions of dollars on opium and heroin markets worldwide.

But farmers in Ningarhar Province in eastern Afghanistan say they doubt
security forces will make anything more than a symbolic effort at
preventing the rise of what Karzai fears will become an Afghan narco-state.

And they vow to continue growing the flower until aid agencies and
Afghanistan's weak central government start providing viable alternatives.

Mohammad Yusaf, a 48-year-old father of nine, served 28 years in the
government. Now he is jobless with no salary.

"We know it is a harmful thing that we do and that it is against human
life," says Yusaf.

"But we are also human beings and we also need to have a good life. We have
no alternatives."

Afghanistan provides three-quarters of the world's heroin -- 97% of
Europe's alone. The country's dry climate is uniquely suited to the red and
white flowers that bloom on roadsides and in hidden valleys alike
throughout the region.

Poppies fare better in dry conditions than wheat, and farmers argue they
aren't subject to the same market pressures as grain.

Farmers who tend hundreds of hectares of poppy crops in the isolated Dare
Noor Valley northeast of Jalalabad say wheat from the World Food Program --
2,000 tonnes from Canada last year -- has glutted Afghanistan's market.

But Susana Rico, director of the World Food Program in the country, said
that's just a simple explanation for a complex problem -- and false
justification for investing in an illegal but wildly profitable business.