WHAT THE TALIBAN BANNED

With the Taliban Toppled, Afghan Opium is Flooding Iran

FROM the point of view of their Iranian neighbours, the Taliban did two
good things. Their leader, Mullah Omar, banned the cultivation of opium
poppies, and he enforced that ban brutally. Iran's leaders much prefer
Afghanistan's new interim prime minister, Hamid Karzai, to his iron-fisted
predecessor, but wish he was tougher on drugs. Although Mr Karzai has
banned both poppy-growing and drug-trafficking, he cannot stop the trade.

What the Afghans grow, Iranians smoke or inject. At least 2m Iranians are
addicted to opium and its derivatives, morphine and heroin. Mr Omar's ban
may have been a cynical ploy to win diplomatic recognition, but it caused
production to plummet and the price of opium to quadruple in a few months.
Impoverished Iranian addicts suddenly applied in record numbers for help in
kicking the habit. Overcoming its revulsion for the Taliban, Iran sent
experts to Helmand, Afghanistan's main poppy-producing province, to
encourage farmers to grow other crops.

All this happened at a time when Iran's domestic drugs policy was becoming
more open and effective. Muhammad Falah, the man in charge, encouraged
non-governmental organisations to set up rehabilitation clinics, spoke out
against the mass imprisonment of drug addicts, and even argued for the
distribution of clean syringes in jails. Such ideas were unthinkable in the
bad old days, when the government's aim was to disguise the problem.

America attacked Afghanistan last year at poppy-planting time. Farmers in
Helmand took advantage of the Taliban's disarray to sow 35,000 hectares
(86,000 acres) with poppies and the UN expects this year's harvest to be
almost as bountiful as the bumper years of the late 1990s. The local
warlords, who probably profit from the trade, pay little heed to Mr Karzai
or his police. Poppies sprout fast: a first crop will be harvested by the
end of April; a second will be ready in June.

Iran has strengthened security along a border already crawling with
soldiers and paralleled by immense trenches, impassable even by a
self-navigating camel with a bellyful of drugs. In two weeks earlier this
year, the security forces in the border province of Sistan-Baluchistan
seized six tons of drugs and killed, they say, 90 smugglers. Mehdi
Morassaie, the province's anti-drugs supremo, hopes to keep prices high. In
the main market in Zahedan, the provincial capital, opium is still
relatively expensive, at $750 a kilo. But in Tehran, where the stuff
usually costs far more, the price has fallen from $2,000 a kilo last
November to around $1,300. After the harvest, prices will surely fall further.

Iran's leaders are understandably frustrated. After helping bring Mr Karzai
to power, they now have less influence over the Afghan drug industry than
before. Muhammad Khatami, Iran's president, says he wants to carry on
helping with crop substitution, but the warlords of southern Afghanistan
are not interested. Nor is America. An Iranian official laments that
America's new chumminess with Afghan warlords may preclude a serious effort
to crush the trade on which they depend.