BANNED POPPIES FLOURISH

KABUL, Afghanistan - Mohammad Ashrafy waited for the death of the family
figurehead, a respected mullah, before he finally planted opium for the
first time this year.

And sometimes, when he gazed out over the huge stretch of poppies he grew
on his land in the Ghor province of central Afghanistan this spring and
summer, he felt guilty, recalling the admonishments of his late uncle,
Mullah Mortaza Kahn.

"We know growing opium is against Islam, but we have to do it," said
Ashrafy, 38. "I was the only person left here not growing it, and there was
no mullah telling me to stop."

The United Nations estimates that half of Ghor's farmers don't earn enough
to cover basic needs. So exhortations to plant alternatives seem doomed
when a grower can make around $5,200 from an acre of opium, but just $121
from an acre of wheat.

Ashrafy and his brother support 35 relatives, including the widows and
children of two other brothers killed in the country's long wars.

Last year, Ashrafy grew wheat, but it provided only half of what the family
needed. If he doesn't grow opium, he said, "I'm sure we'll die, because we
cannot grow enough wheat for ourselves."

So he prays to make peace with Allah.

Throughout Afghanistan, thousands who never grew opium began harvesting
their crops in May, taught by experienced poppy farmers who have been
traveling to new areas to share their skills.

"It's much easier than wheat and you get more money, too," said Ashrafy,
interviewed in Kabul. Last year, opium was about 10 percent of the crops
near the Pakistan border, he said. "This year it's 100 percent."

Heroin Supply

Afghanistan regained its position as the largest opium country last year,
producing 3,750 tons, and this year's production is expected to be as high,
according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. Seventy-five percent of
the world's heroin, obtained from opium poppies, comes from Afghanistan.

At a June congressional hearing in Washington, Bernard Farhi, chief of the
operations branch of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, said opium brought
Afghanistan $1.2 billion last year -- equal to the total of international
aid to Afghanistan in that period. In a recent report, the International
Monetary Fund said opium accounted for up to half of Afghanistan's gross
domestic product, amounting to $2.5 billion in exports.

Early in the era of the Taliban, the radical Islamic regime that allowed
the Al-Qaida terror network to flourish in Afghanistan, opium cultivation
was permitted. But in July 2000, more than a year before the United States
knocked it out of power, the Taliban banned the crop and introduced the
death penalty for opium crimes, leading to a dramatic decline in production.

Now, the regions outside Kabul are under the control of warlords, many of
whom benefit from the trade. Last year's production was nine times higher
than during the final year of Taliban rule.

Little Enforcement

Without a national police force or army, President Hamid Karzai's interim
government cannot enforce its poppy ban, leaving drug-eradication workers
exposed to retaliation. In June, seven of them were mobbed and killed by
poppy farmers in Oruzgan province, 250 miles southwest of Kabul, where
authorities were making a major effort to reduce the poppy crops.

Security in Afghanistan has deteriorated sharply in recent months with an
increase in attacks by anti-government militants. Many argue that without
better security in the provinces, efforts to control poppy growing will fail.

"The fact of the matter is you can't stop opium production when the
warlords control the regions and when we don't expand security beyond
Kabul," Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., said at a May hearing of the Senate
Judiciary Committee on drugs and terrorism. "It was a power vacuum created
by warlords and drug traffickers that enabled the Taliban and Al-Qaida to
turn Afghanistan into an international swamp . . . and now we're back in
the same situation again."

Even before the death of his uncle, who had not been involved with the
Taliban, Ashrafy learned to harvest poppies by helping with his neighbor's
harvest last year. On the first day, he felt odd physical sensations.
"First you get very sweaty, and then you don't know what you are talking
about."

Ashrafy and his surviving brother are large landowners. In the past four
years of devastating drought, many smaller farmers went into debt. This
year, many of them were given loans and seeds by drug traders, to be repaid
upon harvest.

Intimidation

The political fate of the governor of Ghor province, Ebrahim Malakzada, is
a telling example of what can happen to those who try to stop poppy growing.

"This year, the only person who said not to grow opium was the governor,"
said Ashrafy. "He met with the elders and told them not to let people grow
poppies. Then a commander chased him out and he had to flee."

The deputy governor, Mulladin Mohammad Azimy, seized the official
governor's residence and Malakzada, a Karzai ally, was forced to live in
Kabul for a time.

"There are lots of places in Ghor province where they're starting to grow
opium. It's because we don't have the power to stop it, and the central
government doesn't care about our security and power," Malakzada said in a
phone interview.

Rensselaer Lee, an expert on the international drug trade, told the Senate
Judiciary Committee hearing that control of drugs has taken a back seat to
fighting terrorism and building consensus and alliances.

"To build these alliances, unfortunately we've had to make some
arrangements, compromises with people who frankly may have some history of
involvement with the drug trade and may be even currently protecting the
drug trade," said Lee, president of Global Advisory Services, a
Virginia-based research group.