AFGHANISTAN'S DEADLY CROP FLOURISHES AGAIN

With The Taliban Gone, Opium Poppies Carry The Peasants' Hopes Of Prosperity

When fighting broke out in Afghanistan late last year, Fahzel Rahman went
to his cellar and brought out some tiny yellow seeds. In a small plot next
to his mud house, he scattered the seeds in the ground. Last week he
surveyed his burgeoning poppy field with pride.

"You'd be stupid not to grow opium," he said, gesturing at the lettuce-like
plants pushing out of the cracked earth. "If the Americans give us some
money, we'll stop planting poppy. If they don't, we'll carry on."

Mr Rahman lives in Singesar, a dusty village of terraced vineyards and
pomegranate trees half an hour's drive from the southern desert city of
Kandahar. The village is famous because Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban's
fugitive leader, used to live here - a fact that gives Mr Rahman's opium
garden extra piquancy.

Two years ago Mullah Omar issued an edict outlawing opium production across
Afghanistan, at that time the world's largest producer of heroin. Taliban
soldiers ruthlessly enforced the decree. "I grew tomatoes and other garden
vegetables last year," Mr Rahman said. "Before that the Taliban let us
plant poppy."

Nobody knows whether Mullah Omar's edict was inspired by Islamic principle,
was a cynical trick to drive up the price or a last-ditch attempt to
appease the international community. Since the mid-1990s the Taliban had
earned millions of dollars from the heroin trade.

Either way, United Nations officials last month confirmed that poppy
production in Afghanistan fell by 91% last year - from 82,172 hectares to
7,606, with most of that grown in areas controlled by the Northern Alliance.

But with the end of the Taliban's rule, farmers across Afghanistan have
reverted to their old, lucrative ways. The bombing campaign by the United
States has had a result not anticipated by Pentagon strategists - everyone
is planting opium again.

"I can make $1,600 from this small poppy patch here," Mr Rahman said,
pointing to his modest kitchen plot. "If I sell all of the grapes over
there, I'll only make a fraction of that," he added, gesturing towards a
giant, rolling vineyard framed by low mountains and morning sunshine.

According to another opium farmer, Abdul Ali, the harvest season between
May and July is a happy time in Singesar. "We all collect the poppy resin
together, including the children. Even women do it, because the crop grows
very high and nobody can see their faces. We are glad of the money."

The eradication of opium is one of the first big tests for Hamid Karzai,
leader of Afghanistan's new interim authority. He has taken an
uncompromising line on drugs, and called for all poppy production to stop.

But his control over much of the country is tenuous; his fledgling
administration lacks resources and his local officials fail to inspire the
same kind of dread that the Taliban once did. UN officials privately
concede that Afghanistan is heading for a bumper opium crop this year, with
much of it destined for Britain and the rest of Europe.

One senior UN official based in Kandahar said: "The Taliban ban was
implemented almost 100%. Already we know that farmers are planting opium
again. Without any proper enforcement, advocacy and assistance from the
donor community, the problem won't go away."

Mr Karzai's representatives are - on the surface at least - doing their
bit. This month Kandahar's new governor, Gul Agha, closed down the city's
opium bazaar, a venerable city institution that had survived last year's
poppy ban.

"There is nothing left for us now but to sit and drink tea," Shau Ali, 35,
an opium trader lamented, sitting on the carpet of his empty bazaar shack,
decorated with glossy pictures of the Gulf. "We are very sad because we
don't have a job any more. We are trying to persuade the government to let
us sell off our remaining stocks."

Mr Ali said a kilogram of opium currently costs between $2,200 and $2,700,
down from last year's price of $3,300 when there was no prospect of a fresh
crop. But nobody at the opium bazaar seemed genuinely miserable: the
business had, it appeared, merely shifted from the front of the shop to a
small back room accessible via a waist-high door.

Back in Singesar the local security chief revealed that Gul Agha had
instructed him not to worry too much about digging up this year's poppy
harvest - a move that would undoubtedly heap much unpopularity on the new
governor's head.

"There's not much we can do this year because the poppy has already been
planted," Agha Wali said. "We'll make a start next year."

With the Taliban gone, ending Afghanistan's status as the world's largest
heroin producer is clearly going to be an uphill task. In the last year
before the ban came into effect the trade was worth $98m to Afghanistan's
farmers, with most of the buyers wealthy businessmen from Iran and Pakistan.

Opium has flourished in the country's southern desert region - as well as
in northern provinces such as Badakshan - since the time of Alexander the
Great. Unlike wheat, it requires little water and is ideally suited to the
country's arid valleys and unreliable rivers.

Opium grew in Afghanistan during the time of King Zahir Shah - who returns
from exile next month - as well as throughout the Russian invasion, and
the turbulent mojahedin years. Few believe that Mr Karzai can wipe it out.

His predecessor, Mullah Omar, who was Singesar's mullah before founding the
Taliban in 1994, did not grow it himself, local people revealed. "During
the Taliban time there was good law and order because there was one
government," one villager, Mirwais, recalled. "Now there are lots of
different governments and everyone wants to be the boss."

Mullah Omar rarely returned to Singesar after becoming the Taliban's leader
- - only at night and in a fleet of Toyota pick-up trucks with darkened
windows. His last visit was on October 12, five days after the American
bombing raids against Afghanistan began. A US missile struck his car,
killing his 10-year-old son, although he escaped.

Soon after that Mr Rahman and his fellow farmers dug up their fields and
started planting opium again. The cress-like shoots can already be seen
growing close to Mullah Omar's old house, a ghostly, deserted, two-room
building of brick-mud walls.

Were he ever to return to this part of the world, Mullah Omar would
probably approve.