UNEQUAL FORCES LINE UP IN STRUGGLE OVER AFGHAN HEROIN TRADE

Only One Man Stands Between The Traffickers A Drug Explosion On British
Streets, Reports Ahmed Rashid In Lashkargah

A sandstorm without end blows through the Afghan town of Lashkargah. There
are no paved roads, no electricity and no running water. Everyone and
everything is caked in dust.

Yet in the centre of town, at least 8,000 vehicles are parked bumper to
bumper - a vast car showroom in the middle of nowhere where buyers can pick
up the latest four-wheel drives from Toyota and Mercedes, luxurious saloons
and air-conditioned pick up trucks with televisions and video players.

Even in the dust storm the car shops have customers - big, bearded Pathan
tribal chiefs surrounded by armed bodyguards. These are Afghanistan's most
notorious drug dealers and traffickers, who can own as many as a dozen
vehicles and buy new models for cash.

Ranged against them is a lone, though brawny, American, lavishly funded by
the British Government. Steve Shaulis, a bodybuilder, appears to be the only
obstacle to another explosion of Afghan heroin on British city streets in
the coming months.

Until the suicide attacks of September 11, Mr Shaulis had been trading in
dried fruit in Central Asia with, among others, the Taliban.

Now he is trying to persuade Afghan farmers to change their cultivation
habits and abandon poppy growing. Even most aid agencies have abandoned
unstable southern Afghanistan and Mr Shaulis is the only westerner still
working in Lashkargah, the capital of Helmand province.

The British and US governments are funding a dozen or more of his projects
because few others are willing to take the risk.

In 2002 Afghanistan produced 3,400 tons of opium, the raw material for 76
per cent of the world's heroin. About 98 per cent of Britain's heroin comes
from Afghanistan.

The United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime estimates that the Afghan opium
trade is worth ?12.5 billion a year and earns about ?750 million for Afghan
farmers.

"This year we again face a sizeable harvest," Antonio Maria Costa, its
director, said recently. "A good deal of the revenue raised through drugs
goes to the coffers of the warlords and terrorists."

Apart from the drug problem, this is a country in the grip of a Taliban
resurgence with a barely existent national army or police force. In the next
few weeks farmers will need to begin planting poppy seeds for the next
harvest.

Mr Shaulis, who heads the Central Asia Development Group, said: "Millions of
farmers are waiting to see what message is given by [President] Hamid
Karzai, the international community and the US military about incentives not
to plant poppies."

Helmand province is the key to preventing poppy production. In the mid-1990s
Helmand's farmers produced 40 per cent of the total crop in the country and
spread their knowledge about growing the best poppies to other provinces.

Mr Shaulis is trying to turn the tide by persuading Helmand farmers to grow
cash crops, processing them to add value and then exporting them. Helmand's
farmers could then take a different message across the country.

"We can't stop farmers growing poppies, we can only take their arguments for
growing poppies away by real alternatives," said Mr Shaulis. Britain has
given funds to his group to set up a factory in Kandahar to dry and to sort
raisins for export, a project run entirely by women.

Sher Mohammed Akhunzada, the governor of Helmand, said: "I need 30 groups
like CADG to make a real difference because the world has given us so little
aid."

The problem is not only financial. The 11,000 US-led coalition forces
chasing al-Qa'eda and the 5,300 Nato-led peacekeeping troops in Kabul refuse
to apprehend drug traffickers or smash heroin laboratories because it would
interfere in tribal conflicts.