FIELDS OF POPPIES PLANTED, AFGHAN OPIUM PRICES FALL

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - In autumn the fields of poppies are in bloom across
southern Afghanistan, a sea of red, yellow, white and purple.

In the spring, the flowers have gone. In their place, long stems end in
seed pods. Farmers make four cuts in each pod, and collect the sticky white
juice the next day.

The opium cycle in Afghanistan is seasonal, and prices move accordingly.

Right now the planting has ended, and in Kandahar's Hazrat-ji Baba street,
shabby little kiosks offer plastic packets of brown chips of opium at cheap
prices.

"The price has fallen in anticipation of better supplies," said opium
trader Noor ul Haq. "We have had some rain, and it promises to be a better
harvest."

Before they started planting -- coinciding with the fall of the Taliban in
December to U.S. bombs and Northern Alliance fighters -- 150,000 Pakistani
rupees ($2,490) would buy 4.5 kg (10 lb) of raw opium.

The price has now dropped to 110,000 rupees, according to Haq.

Not Welcome

Foreigners are not welcome in muddy Hazrat-ji Baba street. The stares are
hostile. Traders turn their faces away, children toss stones at the
strangers' car.

The Afghanistan-Pakistan-Iran borders form the golden crescent which
diplomats say provides the opium that is processed into two-thirds of the
total illicit heroin smuggled into Europe.

"They used to offer the farmers cotton seed to replace poppies, and no
doubt now there is peace the United Nations will do so again," said Haq.

"But if cotton prices don't match opium at the market, then farmers will go
back to poppies."

The fact is that a farmer with little land can make better money with
opium. It is a cash crop that needs little labour.

Haq was a dealer, buying opium in Jalalabad in the eastern border province
of Nangahar and selling at a higher price in Kandahar.

The drug was plentiful in hilly Nangahar because there were springs to
irrigate farms, while in Kandahar the land was parched from four years of
drought.

Production was higher in neighbouring Helmand, a province bordering Iran,
because the local kerez (an underground well) system provided the necessary
water.

U.N. officials say Afghanistan's new interim government is committed to
eradicating opium production, but there are problems.

Crop replacement requires funds, and until pledges of foreign aid translate
into hard cash, it will be difficult to persuade impoverished farmers to
give up planting poppies.

There are vast profits to be made from smuggling the processed opium --
down to its penultimate stage, morphine sulphate -- to the Gulf, Turkey and
on to Europe.

Several big traders are household names here -- men who have private
armies, a fleet of vehicles, several houses and connections that reach all
the way into the higher echelons of politics and business at home and in
neighbouring states.

Some were close to the Taliban, toppled in Washington's declared war on
terrorism, a campaign triggered by the September 11 attacks on New York and
Washington.

Friends In High Places

Others have made new friends in Afghanistan's interim government.

One sub-sect of the Achakzai tribe, for example, living on both sides of
the Afghan-Pakistan border, has achieved wealth and notoriety for its
alleged drug smuggling, and it has influence in Kandahar's intelligence and
security apparatus.

The austere Taliban banned opium production, but they still profited by it.

"It is widely believed that the Taliban bought cheap and sold dear and made
a killing," said a local opium dealer. "They stockpiled opium when it was
cheap."

The question in Hazrat-ji Baba Street is how the United States will act on
the issue of opium.

"They helped bring in the interim government led by Mr Hamid Karzai and his
allies in Kandahar," said the dealer, who asked not to be identified.

"Will the Americans look the other way when they discover the
administration has co-opted powerful smugglers into its ranks -- or will
they try to expel them?"