US TRIES NEW STRATEGY IN OPIUM WAR

Hopes of making big cuts in Afghanistan's opium production this year have
been abandoned and officials in Europe and the United States are bracing
for a harvest large enough to inundate the world's heroin and opium markets
with cheap drugs.

While the officials have considered measures such as paying Afghan opium
poppy farmers to plough up their fields, they have concluded that
continuing lawlessness and political instability make such a scheme all but
impossible.

Instead, US officials say, they will try a less ambitious strategy: getting
Afghan leaders to conduct a modest eradication program as opium poppies are
harvested over the next two months.

This is intended to show that they were serious in declaring a ban on
production in January.

The Americans will also encourage the destruction of opium-processing
laboratories and a crackdown on brokers, while providing funds to
strengthen anti-smuggling activities by neighbouring countries. The
campaign is to some extent led by Britain, which traces nearly all the
heroin on its streets to Afghanistan.

Until the Taliban banned the cultivation of opium poppies in its last year
in power, Afghanistan produced as much as three quarters of the world's
supply, and taxes on the drug trade were an important source of revenue.

Now, the profits that flowed to local leaders aligned with the Taliban are
expected to enrich tribal leaders and warlords whose support is vital to
the American-backed interim Government.

So long as the drug trade flourishes, law enforcement officials say, it
will fuel political rivalries, foster corruption and undermine the
authority of the central Government.

But because opium poppy farming remains one of the few viable economic
activities, any intense eradication effort could imperil the stability of
the Government and hamper the military campaign against the Taliban and
al-Qaeda.

"The fight against terrorism takes priority," one British law enforcement
official said. "The fight against narcotics comes in second."