SOLDIERS ENFORCE POPPY ERADICATION

MARJAH, Afghanistan - Armed with assault rifles and fistfuls of American
dollars, government agents drove deep into Afghanistan's biggest
poppy-growing region yesterday to begin enforcing a plan to eradicate the
opium-bearing crop.

As soldiers with Kalashnikov rifles and grenade launchers looked on,
tractors chewed up fields of poppy in one part of Helmand province, which
produces most of Afghanistan's opium. Farmers said they had little choice
but to accept state compensation money.

"They have gunmen, they have cars, they have force," said Durjan, a
23-year-old farmer who planned to plant beans where poppies once stood. "We
have no option."

At the urging of the United Nations and foreign governments, the weak
Afghan government is rushing to wipe out the crop that provides the raw
material for heroin just two weeks before most farmers harvest the plant.

Afghanistan was once the source of 70 percent of the world's opium. The
Taliban successfully banned poppies in 2000, but farmers quickly planted
them again as the U.S. bombing campaign helped push the Islamic militia
from power late last year.

The government initially offered poppy farmers $250 to destroy a jirib, an
Afghan land measure equivalent to half an acre, but farmers in Helmand said
the compensation did not cover their cultivation expenses and staged
violent protests.

On Sunday, security forces shot and killed eight farmers who were
protesting the state poppy policy in the Helmand district of Kajaki.

The government has since raised the amount of compensation to $350 per
jirib, said Shabaz Ahmedzai, an adviser to interim Prime Minister Hamid Karzai.

The amount is closer to the $400 farmers say it costs them to plant a
jirib, but still far less than the $1,700 they could expect to receive if
they harvested the poppies.

Durjan said he expected to be paid $1,750 by the government for his five
jiribs.

Flanked by an aide with two stacks of crisp $50 and $100 bills, Mr.
Ahmedzai sat in a farmer's guest house and doled out cash, note by note, to
laborers who had complied with the eradication program.

He said the money had been provided by the United Nations, and urged
foreign governments to provide more aid for schools, irrigation and other
public projects to prevent more destitute farmers from turning to illegal
crops.

"If this doesn't happen, we'll face the same problem again next year," he said.

Farmers in Marjah district, about 30 miles west of the provincial capital
of Lashkar Gah, said they were willing to go along with the
crop-eradication program.

But it was not clear whether the government would be able to wipe out all
the poppy fields in Helmand before full-scale harvesting begins. Some
farmers have already started harvesting their poppy fields early in hopes
of finishing before the government moves to destroy the crop - signaling
how difficult it will be for the weak Afghan government to carry out the
eradication plan.

There are more than 100,000 acres of poppy across Afghanistan, according to
a U.N. assessment. The new government banned the crop in January, well
after farmers planted the seeds.