TALIBAN DRUGS CONTROL 'EFFECTIVE'

LONDON: The Taliban's fight against opium production in Afghanistan was the
"most effective" drug control policy of modern times, research suggests.

During the 1990s, Afghanistan was the main source of the world's illicit
heroin supply. But a UK study has found a Taliban crackdown on drugs led to
global heroin production falling by two-thirds in 2001.

However, it notes that such draconian methods could not be used elsewhere.

Grassroots

Most Afghan heroin production was smuggled illegally to the West and to
neighbouring Pakistan and Iran.

But from July 2000 until its downfall over a year later, the Taliban regime
enforced a ban on cultivating opium poppy - from which heroin is manufactured.

The new report, written by criminologist Professor Graham Farrell from
Loughborough University, has not yet been published, but the BBC has seen
its findings.

Professor Farrell said the Taliban's methods were successful because of the
manner in which the fight was implemented at a grassroots level.

"It was a set of fairly simple techniques - the threat of eradication and
the punishment of transgressors with fairly harsh punishments," he told the
BBC's World Today programme. "What was particularly interesting was the
manner in which it was implemented at the local level."

Production up again

Local community groups and religious leaders were made to implement the
Taliban's policies and could be punished themselves if anyone was found
cultivating opium poppies in their area, he said.

Farmers who refused to comply with the policies had their faces blackened
and were jailed. In extreme cases they were paraded through the streets.

The study said the result was that poppy growing in Taliban-controlled
areas almost ceased and that globally, the heroin supply fell by 65 percent.

But since the Taliban was deposed, poppy cultivation has increased sharply.

Mr Farrell said the success of the strategy raised important questions
about drug policy and policing. But he said it would not be desirable nor
possible to take such draconian measures elsewhere.