POPPY HARVEST BEGINS IN AFGHANISTAN

ESSAZAI KILI, Afghanistan- Some poppy farmers in Afghanistan's biggest
opium-producing region have started harvesting this year's crop early in
hopes of finishing before the government moves to destroy their
narcotic-bearing plants.

"We're in a hurry. We're afraid the government will come and eradicate our
fields," village chief Mohammed Agha said Tuesday. His workers were
slitting the green poppy bulbs and collecting the milky opium resin 10 days
ahead of harvest time.

The accelerated efforts of Agha and his laborers signal how difficult it
will be for the weak Afghan government to carry out a U.N.-backed plan to
wipe out Afghanistan's poppy crop, once the source of 70 percent of the
world's opium. The narcotic is the raw material used to make heroin.

The plan went into effect Monday, with the government of interim Prime
Minister Hamid Karzai offering poor farmers about $500 an acre to destroy
their poppies or allow tractors to churn up the fields.

But farmers in southern Helmand province say they need several times that
amount to cover their cultivation expenses since late last year, when the
Taliban - who successfully enforced a poppy ban - were ousted by a U.S.-led
military campaign.

Since Friday, at least nine poppy farmers and one government official have
died in three separate confrontations linked to the state eradication plan,
according to Afghan officials.

In Lashkar Gah, the dusty capital of Helmand, farmer Abdul Hakim lay in a
hospital bed with a bullet wound in his chest. Security forces shot him
during a protest Sunday by poppy-growers in the district of Kajaki, north
of the provincial capital.

"People have spent so much money on their crops. They're tired, they work
hard. And now the government is trying to eradicate their crops," the
34-year-old Hakim said.

He said several thousand farmers had tried to march to the district chief's
office to protest the government poppy policy. When soldiers stopped them
from advancing, they hurled stones that shattered the windows of military
vehicles.

Security forces fired in the air, and then on the crowd. Eight farmers
died, according to local officials.

"Death to America," Hakim quoted the protesters as shouting. He said they
accused the United States of pressuring the Afghan government to institute
the poppy ban.

The United Nations and foreign governments are urging the Afghan government
to wipe out the poppies, source of much of the heroin available in Europe.
American addicts get most of their heroin from Colombia and Mexico.

In Essazai Kili on Tuesday, the bulbs in several poppy plots stood tall on
strong stems. The bright flowers of many had fallen away, a sign that
harvest time was imminent. Many bulbs were already scarred by the small,
metal-edged implements that farmers use to scratch the surface of the bulb.

The village is in a hot, sandy area where the poppy harvest traditionally
starts sooner than other places in Helmand.

Agha, the village chief, displayed a metal plate of harvested opium, a
brown, gooey mound resembling molasses, with a pungent odor. He said he
planned to sell it to a dealer in Lashkar Gah, eight miles to the north.

The opium market in Lashkar Gah has been closed since January, when the
government announced the poppy ban. But Agha said the dealers were still in
town, operating out of their homes or other more discreet locations.

Couriers then buy the opium and ferry it across the desert on camels or in
pickup trucks, south into Pakistan or west into Iran. Some of it is set
aside for local drug abusers, while the rest is processed into heroin and
shipped to Europe.

There are well over 100,000 acres of poppy in Afghanistan, according to a
preliminary U.N. assessment, indicating the challenge of enforcing a ban on
the crop in a country ravaged by more than two decades of war.

On Tuesday, an untouched poppy field lay just five minutes' drive from a
dirt airstrip in Lashkar Gah where British soldiers waited for a planeload
of supplies. But the soldiers' main mission was to scout around for Taliban
or al-Qaida remnants, and they were not involved in the poppy eradication
program.

The Taliban banned the growing of poppies in 2000, but the downfall of the
Islamic militia amid a U.S. bombing campaign prompted farmers, who say they
don't earn enough from legal crops such as wheat, to quickly replant poppy
seeds.

In an interview in his office, Sher Mohammed, the governor of Helmand, said
tractors protected by armed guards started destroying poppies on Tuesday.
He estimated they had eradicated 100 acres, a tiny fraction of the poppy
fields in Helmand.

The governor said he was not aware that opium collection had begun in
Essazai Kili.