MILITARY OPPOSES SPRAYING POPPIES

The military officials, including representatives of the U.S. Central
Command, have argued in interagency meetings that attacking Afghanistan's
poppy fields is a nonmilitary function that should be left to others.

Proponents of the effort, in the White House and State Department, want the
Pentagon to send special aircraft to drop herbicide on Afghanistan's poppy
fields before the opium-producing plants are harvested in the next four to
six weeks.

"This is asymmetrical warfare, and it would be a prudent force-protection
measure," said a U.S. official close to the debate.

The money obtained from Afghanistan's poppy harvest will fuel the guerrilla
war that is expected to escalate against U.S. and allied forces in the
coming months.

The money from the poppies also will bolster anti-U.S. elements in the
Pakistani ISI intelligence service, the officials said.

"If this opium is harvested and permitted to go to market, it will
re-empower the negative elements in Pakistan's security service and lead to
instability in Pakistan," the official said. "And it will fund a new round
of international terrorism."

A National Security Council spokesman had no comment, noting that the
subject is part of an ongoing internal debate.

Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, has rejected
the idea of using U.S. military forces for poppy crop eradication,
according to a Pentagon official.

"That's not our mission," an official quoted Gen. Franks as saying.

Drug Enforcement Administration chief Asa Hutchinson told Congress on March
12 that the DEA has obtained "multisource information" linking al Qaeda and
its leader, Osama bin Laden, to heroin trafficking.

"The very sanctuary previously enjoyed by bin Laden was based on the
existence of the Taliban's drug state, whose economy was exceptionally
dependent on opium," Mr. Hutchinson said.

Afghanistan produced over 70 percent of the world supply of illicit opium
in 2000, and U.S. officials said the current crop is expected to be large.

A DEA intelligence report in September said that Afghanistan produced 74
metric tons of opium from 4,162 acres of poppy fields last year.

The opium produced was significantly less than in 2000, when 3,656 metric
tons of opium were produced from 64,510 hectares of land that year.

Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, who was ousted during U.S. military
operations in December, issued a decree in July 2000 banning poppy
cultivation in Afghanistan. He ordered the militia to eradicate any poppy
fields under Taliban control.

The State Department, which is in charge of nonmilitary policies toward
Afghanistan, has been unable to purchase the special aircraft required to
spray herbicide on the poppies, the officials said.

One option under consideration is to purchase two Air Tractor aerial
spraying aircraft and send them to Afghanistan. The plan called for using a
special defoliant designed to kill poppy and coca plants without injuring
other plants.

But the State Department was slow to take steps to arrange the aircraft
purchase, so the aircraft cannot be procured until August - well after the
poppy fields have been harvested and the material turned into opium and heroin.

The DEA intelligence report said "numerous" laboratories are located in
Afghanistan and Pakistan and there are "significant" numbers of opium
dealers in the Jalalabad and Ghani Khel areas.

The laboratories are known to be located in Afghanistan's northwest border
areas of Kunduz and Badakhstan provinces.

Military officials are said to have opposed the crop-spraying plan as being
too risky in Afghanistan, where al Qaeda and Taliban fighters still pose a
threat.

Most of the drug-producing crops are located in Afghanistan's Helmand,
Kandahar, Nangarhar and Lowgar provinces.

Administration officials also are upset that the Central Command did not
conduct bombing raids against opium warehouses in Afghanistan during the
military campaign that began Oct. 7.

The facilities went unscathed after legal advisers at Central Command
headquarters in Tampa, Fla., determined the opium storehouses were not
legitimate military targets.

Interim government leader Hamid Karzai has continued the Taliban ban on
poppy growing. Mr. Karzai also has sought international support for
anti-drug efforts in the country.

Iran's official Islamic Republic News Agency reported last week that Afghan
farmers have begun cultivating poppy fields. Brig. Gen. Mehdi Abouei, chief
of Iran's counter-drug efforts, said on March 18 that poppy cultivation is
increasing since the U.S.-led bombing campaign and could result in a crop
of up to 2,500 ton of opium this season.