TOUGH FIGHT SEEN AGAINST AFGHAN OPIUM

KABUL, Afghanistan -- The country is fighting an uphill, "David and
Goliath" battle to control opium production, which is being used to fund
terrorism in some parts of the nation, the chief of the United Nations
antidrug agency said yesterday.

Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, ended a
visit to the world's dominant supplier of opium and its heroin derivative
by saying the drug culture is inextricably linked with poverty and insecurity.

He praised the government of President Hamid Karzai for starting to try to
eradicate tens of thousands of acres of poppy fields, which are often the
only source of income for farmers, traffickers, and warlords.

Costa said Karzai is about to sign the first antidrug law in Afghanistan
and has created a counternarcotics arm of the National Security Council.
But its annual budget is only $3 million, compared with estimated revenues
from opium production in Afghanistan last year of $1.2 billion.

"Today it is David against Goliath, and it is a huge Goliath, and it is a
very small David," Costa said.

He added poppy cultivation spread to new areas in the last year, including
Farah in the west, Ghor in the center, Faryab in the northwest, and
Samangan in the north. But production seemed to have dropped in some of the
five traditional opium-producing provinces: Helmand, Nangarhar, Badakhshan,
Uruzgan, and Kandahar.

The net result was an expected harvest in 2003 close to last year's 3,422
metric tons of opium. Output dropped to 185 metric tons in 2001 after the
ousted Taliban regime banned production. A metric ton equals about 2,200
pounds.

"Expectations for a not very different harvest in 2003 are, of course,
putting downward pressure on the price," he said. There are no reliable
forecasts for 2003.

According to Costa, some poverty-stricken farmers have little choice but to
grow opium, a far more lucrative crop than wheat. Others are under pressure
from suspected Taliban guerrillas operating near the border with Pakistan.
Farmers "say terrorists are being nourished by the trafficking and are now
forcing or helping the traffickers," Costa said.

Some Afghan commanders and warlords use opium revenues for personal gain,
but many have little choice but to keep growing poppies. "Are the
commanders getting rich because of the trafficking? Some of them," Costa
said. "Most of them, I believe, are using their resources extracted from
narco-traffickers to feed their armies, to arm their armies."

Disarming factions, improving infrastructure, building the national army,
and finding alternative employment for personal militia controlling large
areas of the country are essential to reducing opium production, Costa said.