FINANCIAL LURE SPURS OPIUM CROP

GHANIKHEL, Afghanistan -- At the entrance to this thriving village in
Nangahar province is an old, bent metal sign that reads: "Drug abuse is the
greatest evil of society. Let us save ourselves, our children, and our
society."

But in the surrounding fields, farmers feverishly plowing for winter
planting season have only one crop in mind: opium poppy. Some have already
agreed to sell their future crop to smugglers from Pakistan, who are eager
to front them seed and fertilizer money in return for a guaranteed low
price at harvest time.

"Everyone is growing poppy now, and there's no way to stop it," said farmer
Amar Gul, 50, rattling off the frank economic calculus that makes
poppy-growing such a temptation for Afghanistan's impoverished rural
communities.

Growing wheat on a half-acre of land could bring the equivalent of $70 a
season, Gul explained. "That's not even enough to pay for fertilizer," he
said. "If I grow poppy, I can earn about $1,230. That's enough to buy
fertilizer, feed my children for the year, and maybe even buy a refrigerator."

Two years ago, Afghanistan was virtually poppy-free. The country's strict
Islamic militia, the Taliban, banned the flourishing crop in mid-2000, and
it soon vanished from the fields. But in recent months, with deterrence
efforts weak, opium poppies have made a spectacular comeback, nearly
reaching the record-high production levels of the 1990s.

According to a report released last month by the UN Office on Drugs and
Crime, Afghan poppies -- whose sap is the basis for three-fourths of the
opium and heroin consumed illegally abroad -- are being grown on 197,000
acres across 28 of the country's 32 provinces. This year the country is
expected to produce 3,960 tons of opium worth about $2.3 billion, which is
equal to half of Afghanistan's gross domestic product.

In Nangahar, one of the nation's top two poppy-producing provinces,
cultivation peaked in 1999 at 56,000 acres, plunged to just 537 acres after
the ban in 2001, and climbed again to 46,000 this year. Shinwar, the
district that includes Ghanikhel, seesawed from 3,692 acres in 1999 to zero
in 2001 to 3,938 this year.

"There is a palpable risk that Afghanistan will again turn into a failed
state, this time in the hands of drug cartels and narcoterrorists," wrote
Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the UN anti-drug program.

The farmers of Ghanikhel dismiss such dire predictions. Poppies have been a
principal crop for decades, they said, mostly produced on small family
plots and sold to local traders. The big traffickers, with their violent
methods and international networks, operate somewhere beyond the borders in
Pakistan and elsewhere in Central Asia.

UN specialists here agreed that despite its rapid growth, the Afghan poppy
trade has not generated much violence or organized criminal activity. But
they noted that local militia bosses and administrators in some provinces
demand a substantial share of drug profits and that opium traders
increasingly offer advance credit for pledges of future crops.

"There is not a lot of high-level corruption or sophisticated dealing. It's
all quite loose and informal," said Adam Bouloukos, a UN antidrug official
in Kabul, the Afghan capital. "People load up donkeys and drive them to the
border."

But he also said that many small farmers become permanently indebted to
opium traders to purchase fertilizer and other agricultural needs, and
security officials at road checkpoints often extort cash from truckers
carrying opium.

"It's not clear where the money goes after that, but only [militia]
commanders have the reach necessary to control such networks," Bouloukos said.

Since taking office in late 2001, the UN-backed government of President
Hamid Karzai has made several efforts to curb poppy production and trade,
but none has been effective. Last year, with financial assistance from
Britain, the government promised cash and development projects to farmers
in Nangahar who planted alternative crops or allowed their poppies to be
destroyed. Cultivation was halted in five districts, but growers complained
that most projects never materialized and some money was siphoned off by
local intermediaries. The program was suspended.

"We built one road, but that's not enough to stop opium," said Abdul Ghaus,
provincial manager of the national Counter Narcotics Directorate.