HEROIN FINANCING AFGHAN RESISTANCE

Fall Of Taliban Revived Cultivation Of Opium Poppies

KABUL, Afghanistan - U.N. and Afghan officials have called for U.S.-led
coalition forces to help combat the booming drug trade that profits both
warlords with links to the government and terror groups fighting against it.

Afghanistan is the world's largest producer of opium, the raw material of
heroin, and last year accounted for about three-quarters of the global supply.

Production increased dramatically after the fall of the hard-line Taliban
regime, which had successfully banned cultivation of opium poppies.

Afghan and U.N. officials concede that among the major beneficiaries are
military commanders who are part of the current U.S.-backed government, but in
practice control their own private armies. Many were instrumental in defeating
the Taliban regime in late 2001 and have operated in tandem with coalition
forces in the war on terror.

"You have a dramatic problem here: an illicit activity which is feeding a
monster with many heads," Antonio Maria Costa, the chief of the U.N. Office on
Drugs and Crime, said in an interview during a visit to Afghanistan last week.

Anti-drug experts suspect that al-Qaida and the Taliban, which have recently
stepped up resistance to the Afghan government, are also using proceeds from
the illicit trade to fund their activities. "I'm positive that drugs and
terrorists go side-by-side in Afghanistan," Mirwais Yasini, director-general of
the Counter Narcotics Directorate, said yesterday.

Costa said he was trying to persuade the 11,500-strong U.S.-led coalition
charged with hunting down followers of the terror groups to target drug
traffickers too -- a stand supported by Yasini.

He said Afghanistan produced 3,400 tons of opium last year -- a huge increase
on the final year of the Taliban, but less than the 4,600 tons in 1999 before
the Islamic hard-liners enforced their ban.

It's not yet clear how this year's crop will compare, but Costa predicted that
the revenue from opium cultivation would probably decrease significantly, as
prices had dropped by about 50 percent in the past year.

The wave of cheap heroin smuggled across Afghanistan's borders has alarmed
neighbors such as Russia, whose drugs control chief last week called for more
international pressure on Afghanistan to reduce the flow.

Costa said Afghanistan was virtually rebuilding from scratch after years of
war, and had little capacity to track down and prosecute drug dealers.