POPPY GROWERS SEE PROMISES WILT

CHAPARHAR, Afghanistan - Three months ago, a truckload of government
workers arrived at Malik Ziauddin's village, accompanied by armed
guards. Wielding sticks and sickles, they beat and chopped at his
prized crop until only useless green pulp was left.

Ziauddin, 65, a sunburned farmer, watched with mingled regret and
anticipation. Like thousands of other farmers who grow opium poppies
in Afghanistan, he had been promised $350 in cash for each 15th of an
acre that was destroyed--far less than drug smugglers normally paid,
but still a tempting deal.

By last week, however, none of the money had reached the poppy farmers
in Ziauddin's village, parched by four years of drought that thirstier
crops such as wheat cannot withstand. The villagers vowed angrily that
if they are not paid soon, they will start growing poppies again.

"We know poppy causes problems for people in other parts of the world,
and we would not grow it if we had water," Ziauddin said. "Every time
we go to the city for our money, they tell us to come back later. . .
. This is our livelihood. Soon we will have no choice but to plant."

The frustration expressed by Ziauddin and his neighbors is the
unintended fallout from an internationally backed effort to eradicate
poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, which produces about 75 percent of
the opium used for making heroin worldwide. Repeatedly undermined by a
variety of problems, including subterfuge and sabotage by growers,
logistical delays, political rivalries and violence, the ambitious
three-month effort ended recently with only 25 percent of the crop
destroyed and the rest making its way through the illegal pipeline to
addicts in the West.

A Lucrative Crop

Poppies have been harvested in small amounts for generations in
Afghanistan, but as world demand for heroin soared in the 1960s and
'70s, more and more Afghan farmers switched to poppies, which yield 20
times the price of wheat.

Poppy cultivation peaked in 1999, with 225,000 acres sown and 5,050
tons of opium produced, while most of Afghanistan was ruled by the
Islamic Taliban movement. But the Taliban suddenly banned the crop and
succeeded in virtually wiping it out, with only 19,000 acres grown
last year, according to the UN Drug Control Program.

After the Taliban collapsed in November under a U.S.-led military
assault, many farmers returned to growing poppies. By February, a UN
land survey predicted that 1,900 to 2,700 tons of opium would be
produced in Afghanistan this year.

"People weren't sure whether the Taliban were going to fall or not
last year, so some planted poppy and some didn't, but already the
level is back up to about half what it was," said Mohammed Alim, the
UN program's regional director in Jalalabad.

The government of President Hamid Karzai, which was installed by the
United Nations in December with Western backing, came under strong
foreign pressure to halt the poppy revival. In February, Karzai banned
production.

As a short-term incentive, the British government offered to subsidize
farmers who agreed to destroy their plants. Most of the heroin
consumed in Britain originates in Afghanistan. Other donors promised
longer-term projects to dig wells and irrigation canals so farmers
could switch back to edible crops.

Key Official Slain

Eradication began in April, and one of its major targets was here in
Nangahar province, a rich agricultural region in eastern Afghanistan
that is a major poppy producer. Haji Abdul Qadir, then the provincial
governor, visited numerous villages urging farmers to comply, but last
month he was assassinated in Kabul, where he had just been named a
vice president.

"He asked us not to grow poppy, and we told him we had no water to
grow anything else. He promised to bring us water, and because we
respected him as an elder, we obeyed," said Sahar Gul, 80, a farmer in
Qadir's native Sukh Rod district. "Two or three days later, he was
killed. Now we don't know whether we will get water or not."

According to a British official who worked with the program,
government videotapes of workers chopping down poppy plants showed
farmers in the background, frantically slitting poppy bulbs to obtain
as much opium sap as possible before the plants were crushed.

"They wanted to have their cake and eat it too," said the official.