CRACKDOWN MOVES OPIUM MARKET UNDERGROUND

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- Last month, Kandahar's new police chief summoned
the prosperous merchants of Narcotics Street to his office and ordered them
to close their opium shops.

Within days, the plastic bags of sticky, black raw opium disappeared from
the shops' shelves. The trademark brown handprints that covered the walls
as advertisements for the narcotic were slathered in fresh white paint.

Now, in many shops the shelves are bare. In others, brightly colored
packets of snack foods hang on the walls and tin cans of cooking oil are
stacked neatly across the front.

But the klatches of turbaned men sipping tea on the floors of the
open-front cubicles aren't interested in snacks or groceries. They are here
to haggle over the price of the raw opium that still leaves Kandahar to be
processed into heroin for sale in Europe, with some making its way to the
United States.

"Today we have no narcotics in the shops," said a 28-year-old merchant who
has sold raw opium on Narcotics Street for four years. "Now people will
store it elsewhere. They'll make the exchanges in different places."

In recent weeks, international officials have hailed the crackdown on
Narcotics Street as a milestone for post-Taliban Afghanistan. But, as with
many efforts to tame the excesses of a country ravaged by years of war and
international neglect, the anti-drug campaign here in the Taliban's
birthplace has done little more than move the drug trade underground.

Merchants estimate that, of the 40 shopkeepers who sold their wares openly,
five quit their businesses, about 20 continue to sell secretly from their
stores and the rest are making drug transactions from their homes or other
locations.

"We still have dealers," said one merchant, hunched on the floor of his
boxlike shop, now devoid of any product -- legitimate or illegitimate -- on
public display. The shopkeeper, like each of the half-dozen drug sellers
who agreed to be interviewed, spoke on the condition that his name not be used.

The merchants of Narcotics Street, which stretches two blocks in one of the
city's busy commercial neighborhoods, said they have grown accustomed to
the vagaries of Afghanistan's changing governments. The street -- a chaotic
gridlock of pedestrians, horse-drawn wagons and four-wheel-drive vehicles
- -- has become a reflection of each new government's attempts at social reform.

Before the Taliban took over Kandahar, the street was known as Weapons
Place. The shops were stuffed with Kalashnikov assault rifles, rocket
launchers and boxes of bullets, shopkeepers said. In a region where
banditry and lawlessness were the norm, trade was brisk.

Then the Taliban seized power and abolished the arms trade. Savvy merchants
were undaunted.

"When the Taliban took away the weapons, all the shops switched to the
narcotics business," said one shopkeeper, a gray turban wrapped around his
head and beads draped over one hand.

The price of raw opium jumped dramatically and profits exploded, according
to those who made the switch. As a barometer of the money the drug trade
brought to the former arms merchants, monthly rents on the tiny shops
skyrocketed after Weapons Place was redubbed Narcotics Street.

"Business was great," said the 28-year-old drug seller. "Trucks and cars
would pull up to your shop and fill up with narcotics. It was open. Nobody
said anything, neither the government nor the local people."

At that time Afghanistan was producing 70 percent of the world's opium,
three times the output of Burma, its closest competitor, according to U.S.
and international law enforcement agencies.

Two years ago, the Taliban shifted its drug policy and banned the
cultivation of opium poppies, merchants said. The ban was largely ignored
the first year. Last year, however, the Taliban government "got serious,"
said one drug dealer.

If a farmer was caught growing poppies, Taliban police would hang poppies
around his neck, blacken his face with charcoal and parade him around the
village.

But where poppy farmers found fear, drug merchants saw opportunity.

"When Mullah Omar announced the ban, we saw it as a chance for a great
profit for everyone, especially in Kandahar," said one Narcotics Street
merchant, referring to Taliban leader Mohammad Omar. "I bought everything I
could find and stored it."

Raw opium purchased for about $25 a pound at the time of Omar's declaration
sold for as much as $300 a pound a few months later, according to dealers here.

Though Omar assailed the negative effects of narcotics in his radio
announcements, his government largely ignored the profitable trade on
Narcotics Street.

"I didn't stop," said one merchant. "Nobody stopped. There was no ban on
buying or selling, just on growing."

The rise in the fortunes of one twentysomething merchant during the
Taliban's rule exemplifies the obstacles Afghanistan's new government will
face in trying to put the men of Narcotics Street out of business.

The man said he had struggled to support his wife and three children with a
used-car business that brought him a monthly profit of about $100. His
father's almond and raisin sales were the principal support for the man,
his family, his four brothers and their families -- all of whom lived with
his parents.

Now, after four years of operations on Narcotics Street, the same young man
is the primary means of support for 28 family members. In the best months,
he said, he made $6,000 -- a fortune by Afghan standards.

"Before, I was dependent on my father," he said. "He paid everything. Now I
pay everything."

This year, he financed his parents' $3,200 trip to Saudi Arabia for the
hajj pilgrimage.

In a country where the majority of the population is barely scratching out
a living, that kind of story frustrates Kandahar Police Chief Zabit Akram.

"We're trying our level best to ban these bad activities," said Akram,
wearing the olive drab uniform of the new police force. "But it's up to
you, to America, to make the world understand it needs to help these poor
people."

His department doesn't have the money or the manpower to do much more than
make radio announcements beseeching farmers and dealers to stop the drug
business, he said. On Feb. 14, he supervised the first public burning of a
small pile of hashish and raw opium confiscated by his men at road checkpoints.

The merchants of Narcotics Street are feeling some pressure, however. Since
the fall of the Taliban, drug prices have dropped sharply because couriers
have been reluctant to travel to the Iranian and Pakistani borders, where
most of the raw opium is taken, sellers said.

Dealers said the price they receive for raw opium has dropped nearly 40
percent since the start of the U.S. bombing campaign on Oct. 7.

"People are trying to sell now," said one dealer. "When the U.S. attacked,
they thought Bush was not only against Osama bin Laden, he was also against
narcotics. Some people are afraid if they are caught, the Americans will
come and take them to cages in Cuba."

The dealer said he considers the obstacles and the slowdown in the market
temporary, however. With a huge percentage of farmers in surrounding
provinces already cultivating a new crop of poppies, the curtailment of
overt sales on Narcotics Street will only prompt merchants to become more
savvy, he insisted.

"I'm buying a satellite phone," he said with an air of confidence.