DISORDERS ENDANGER RETURN OF AFGHANS FROM PAKISTAN AND IRAN

KABUL, Afghanistan, April 9 -- Fighting in the west and protests in the
east today threatened the return of thousands of Afghan refugees from Iran
and Pakistan as the American-backed government here showed further signs
that it was incapable of asserting its control over large swaths of the
country.

On the eastern border, hundreds of poppy growers, enraged by a government
program to destroy their opium-producing crops, joined in a mass protest.
They blocked the highway from Pakistan and immobilized more than 20,000
people trying to return home from Pakistani refugee camps.

The protests also placed in doubt the viability of the Western-backed plan
to prevent the resurgence of Afghanistan as a major exporter of opium.

In the west, fighting between rival warlords hindered the scheduled start
of an effort backed by the United Nations to bring home the first of about
two million Afghans who have been living in camps across the Iranian border.

There were conflicting reports over how many refugees were able to cross
the border today, but aid officials expressed concern that continued
fighting could discourage the refugees from coming across.

Officials of the interim Afghan government led by Hamid Karzai said today
that unidentified fighters had attacked a military patrol in eastern
Afghanistan with grenades, killing one person and wounding two.

The Afghan soldiers came under attack as they were working with American
forces. The soldiers killed two of their assailants, Afghan officials said
in Kabul.

The ambush took place in Paktia Province, near the site of the major
American military assault on Taliban and Al Qaeda hideouts last month.
There have been persistent reports that Taliban and Al Qaeda forces,
regrouping in the province and across the border in Pakistan, were
preparing to mount guerrilla attacks.

The refugee problems, combined with reports of the ambush, added to a
growing sense here that the effort to maintain stability faced serious
obstacles. On Monday a bomb believed to have been intended to kill Mr.
Karzai's defense minister, Muhammad Fahim, exploded near his motorcade,
killing four civilians.

Earlier this week the international security force sent to maintain order
here in the capital came under rocket fire. Last week the Karzai government
detained more than 500 people in what it said was a plot to mount bomb
attacks against Mr. Karzai and the former king, Mohammad Zahir Shah.

On the eastern border, hundreds of poppy growers, mostly poor and indebted
farmers who work small plots, stopped virtually all traffic entering the
country from Pakistan through the Khyber Pass, pelting the few passing cars
with stones.

The police dispersed many of the protesters but failed to open the highway,
the capital's main road link to the outside world.

Thousands of Afghans, trying to return to their homes after years in
refugee camps, poured into the area around the border town of Torkham with
nowhere to go. Most just sat, slept and milled about in the road where they
had stopped.

The confrontation seems likely to continue. Today, aid workers in Kabul
scrambled to send food and water to the stalled returnees, and Afghan
officials vowed to press ahead with their plan to destroy the
opium-producing crops.

The more than $50 million program, financed in large part by Britain and
the United States, is intended to pay poppy farmers to destroy their crops
in the weeks leading up to harvest time.

The program is a last-ditch effort to head off a resurgence of Afghanistan
as a major opium producing country. Under the program, government officials
would pay farmers about $1,250 per hectare, about two and a half acres, to
destroy their poppies.

Ashraf Ghani, a senior adviser to Mr. Karzai, said the government would
resist demands of the opium producers, whom he described as ruthless
businessmen preying on the local farmers under their control.

"There are people who have been making fortunes out of the misery of
others," Mr. Ghani said. "And you would expect them to raise the specter of
violence, of instability, of threats. We are determined to move ahead."

The problem, conceded by drug control officials here, is that the cash
offered by the government is nowhere near what farmers can earn by selling
their poppies on the open market.

Throughout the opium producing areas, farmers are often deeply in debt to
the warlords who preside over the opium trade. Hence, some farmers have
reacted violently when faced with the prospect of receiving anything other
than top dollar for their crops.

Since Sunday, nine people were reported to have been killed in clashes
between poppy farmers and officials trying to destroy their crops.

Along the Iranian border, the repatriation effort was threatened by recent
fighting between warlords struggling for control of border checkpoints, a
traditional source of revenue for Afghan commanders.

Abdul Karim Barahui, a warlord near Afghanistan's southwestern border with
Iran, told The Associated Press that a rival warlord had successfully
captured two of his posts in an attack on Monday.

About 3,000 Afghans intending to return gathered today in Soleiman Khani, a
repatriation camp in western Tehran. Ten buses and two trucks waited to
take the first group to the border, about 700 miles away.

One of those at the camp was Anvar Golahmad, who fled his home in central
Afghanistan five years ago. With all of his belongings slung in a bag over
his shoulder, Mr. Golahmad turned to a refugee officer and told him he was
ready.

"I am healthy and ready to go home," Mr. Golahmad said.