MAIN DRUG CONTROL AGENCY IN KABUL IS EVICTED

Despite promises to crack down on the drugs trade, the new Afghan
government has evicted the main drug control agency from its headquarters
in Kabul and taken its vehicles.

"They literally threw us into the street," said Mir Najibullah Shams, the
Secretary-General of the State High Commission for Drug Control. "I don't
have a phone to call up commanders in the provinces. They didn't even leave
us with a bicycle."

The contempt with which the new Afghan administration has treated its main
drugs agency bodes ill for any attempt to curtail opium and heroin
production in Afghanistan. This is despite promises by the new
administration at the summit on aid to Afghanistan in Tokyo this week that
it would try to reduce the flow of narcotics out of the country in return
for $4.5bn (UKP3.2bn) from donors.

Afghanistan is the world's largest exporter of heroin and provides about 80
per cent of Western Europe's supply and an even higher proportion of heroin
used in Russia and Central Asia. Between a third and a half of the Afghan
population is believed by experts to be involved in growing, producing or
trafficking in narcotics.

Mr Shams, who has taken refuge in a room in the Afghan Foreign Ministry,
showed a number of maps illustrating the huge increase in the mid-nineties
in the number of provinces growing opium poppies. Mullah Omar, the Taliban
leader, had successfully banned the planting of poppies in 1999, but the
collapse of central government control in much of Afghanistan in the last
two months may mean that farmers will once again produce opium.

The former headquarters of the High Commission for Drug Control is a
substantial three-storey building which has been taken over by a newspaper
called Payam-I-Mujaihid which supports the government. Mr Shams admits that
its 300 employees were never able to do very much about narcotics because
"until you solve the problems of the Afghan farmers they will produce
drugs. What do you expect them to do when they are dressed in rags and
their children have nothing to eat?"