TRIBESMEN TAKE UP ARMS TO RESIST AFGHAN DRUG WAR

JALALABAD, Afghanistan - Authorities were forced to stop
destruction of opium poppy fields in parts of an eastern Afghan
province after tribesmen took up arms to resist the move, residents
said Sunday.

They said tribesmen in Shinwar, Khogyani and Achin districts of
Nangarhar province opened fire when anti-drug enforcers from the
provincial government showed up Saturday and an unidentified person
was wounded in Achin.

Production of opium, which is used to make heroin exported to Europe
and the United States, has soared to near record levels in Afghanistan
since the fall of the fundamentalist Taliban regime last year.

Noor Rahman, a native of Khogyani, said tribesmen had vowed to resist
future eradication efforts with force.

"The tribesmen used loudspeakers to call on people to come out of
their houses to resist the plan," he told Reuters. "Government troops
have been forced to leave the area."

Saifour Rahman, from Shinwar, said the tribesmen there had also vowed
armed resistance, saying the government had failed to provide
alternatives to opium growing.

The Taliban succeeded in implementing a near total ban on production,
but this collapsed after its overthrow.

The United Nationshas forecast Afghanistan's opium production will
reach a near record 3,400 tons this year, making it the world's
biggest producer once more.

More than a third of Afghanistan's drugs come from Nangahar, which
border's Pakistan's tribal belt.

Authorities in the provincial capital Jalalabad said the tribal
resistance was only a temporary problem.

"People can't stop this effort," Jalalabad governor Haji Deen Mohammad
said in reaction to the events.

However, it appeared a setback for President Hamid Karzai's
government, which is under pressure from its Western backers to halt
opium cultivation.

Karzai ordered a ban on drugs production when he came to power and
promised farmers $350 for each acre of poppies destroyed. But many
farmers complain they have yet to see any compensation and have
flouted the ban.

In the spring, several dozen opium farmers were killed in a battle
with government forces in the southern province of Helmand.

Diplomats say current erradication efforts may achieve little since
poppies plowed up so soon after planting have time to grow again.

They say farmers in debt to moneylenders often find they have no
choice but to grow opium, sometimes at the behest of powerful local
figures who profit most from the trade.