OPIUM CRACKDOWN RILES AFGHAN FARMERS

GHANI KHIEL, Afghanistan--Soldiers stormed in by the hundreds, smashed the
bolted wooden doors of ramshackle shops and seized more than six tons of
opium at Afghanistan's biggest drug market.

The raid this week was the largest show of the interim government's resolve
to wipe out the lucrative opium trade that resumed with the fall of the
Taliban.

But it went badly wrong.

The soldiers appeared more like a thieving party, ripping the watches off
the wrists of store owners, pulling money from their pockets and taking
everything in the shops--as well as the opium, shopkeepers said.

''They weren't interested in destroying our opium. They took our opium to
sell,'' said Javed Khan, a store owner. ''They were just thieves.''

''They ordered us to sit down and then just took everything,'' said
Mohammed Nabi.

Now residents of Ghani Khiel, 36 miles east of the provincial capital of
Jalalabad, are fighting mad--and heavily armed.

''We're ready to shed blood over this,'' Khan said.

On Friday, a rocket launcher was pointed toward the village entrance.
Residents warned they were ready to do battle with the government if a
settlement is not brokered by their elders, who were meeting to find a way
out of the impasse.

Negotiations won't be easy. Fifty residents are in jail and the entire
village is up in arms.

The elders sat in a stark white cement building in Ghani Khiel. Outside,
their bodyguards brandished rocket launchers and Kalashnikov assault
rifles, and railed against Haji Abdul Qadir, the interim regime's governor
of the eastern province of Nangarhar.

When the opium market flourished, shopkeepers in Ghani Khiel had a routine.
They sat in their dusty courtyards on rope beds, sipping tea and waiting
for customers.

On Friday, they gathered as usual, but their shops were shuttered. They
accused Qadir of sending soldiers into Ghani Kiel because most residents
are loyal to a rival warlord, Haji Zaman Khan.

At the entrance to Ghani Khiel, a graffiti-scarred board put up by the
deposed Taliban still sits slightly lopsided. It reads: ''Drug abuse is the
greatest evil of our society. Let us save our lives, save our children's
lives.''

But inside Ghani Khiel's opium market, store owners say they aren't ready
to change.

''When they give us roads, schools, hospitals and something that brings us
as much money, we will stop selling it,'' said Gul Ahmed Shah, a store
owner whose long gray beard was shaggy and unkempt. Other shopkeepers
agreed, speaking at once, interrupting each other, each in turn complaining
about the woeful state of their economy.

Interim Prime Minister Hamid Karzai--like the Taliban--banned poppies, but
so far most farmers have ignored the order. Karzai's government has offered
money to farmers to destroy their crops.

But Khan, the shopkeeper, said the interim government has to first deal
with a credibility problem. No one believed the opium the soldiers took
would be destroyed.

''You tell them, 'If it is the opium they wanted to destroy, then tell them
to bring it right here and burn it in front of us,''' Khan said. ''Then we
will talk about the next step.''

AP