POPPY BAN PLEASES DEALERS IN OPIUM

ANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- Ali Muhammad, a gregarious opium trader in a
flowing brown robe and wrinkled black turban, was delighted by the news on
Wednesday that his country's interim government had vowed to ban poppy
cultivation, renewing a prohibition imposed under the ousted Taliban
government that cut opium production by about 95 percent last year.

"We'll be rich," he said, sitting on an electric-blue carpet in one of the
dozens of stalls that line this city's bustling opium market.

A crowd of other traders agreed. Since the Taliban fell from power, farmers
have been planting more poppies, and middlemen have been dumping opium
stocks into the market, sending prices plunging by half. The falling market
has hurt merchants like Mr. Ali.

One of the traders pulled a fist-size chunk of raw opium out of a plastic
bag and explained that a kilogram (2.2 pounds) of the black resin fetched
40,000 Pakistani rupees in August, or about $650 at current exchange rates.
But it is worth only 20,000 rupees a kilogram today.

If farmers continue to grow opium unimpeded, the trader said, the price
could fall back to 2,000 rupees a kilogram, the level before the Taliban's
ban, when opium was the biggest cash crop in the country and Afghanistan
the largest opium producer in the world.

But Mr. Ali and his friends probably should not calculate their profits
before the opium is sold. Many people question whether the loose alliance
of warlords who have pledged allegiance to the interim government in Kabul
have the political will to carry out the cultivation ban. Opium has long
been the currency of power in this arid land.

"The people with guns will keep growing it, and big businessmen will
benefit the most," predicted Hajji Abdul Rahman, an older trader in a white
turban and beard. With a sharp tongue and dismissive flicks of his hands,
he delivered a lecture on market economics to his younger colleagues,
explaining that the gains from the ban for small traders like themselves
would be short-lived, while higher prices would only make it more difficult
for them to finance their businesses.

More significant than the cultivation ban, Mr. Rahman said, was the news
that the new government might outlaw trading in the drug.

Even the Taliban allowed trading to continue while cultivation was banned,
a move that many people suggested was a ploy to drive the value of the
country's opium stocks higher while the government reaped the benefit of
foreign aid tied to slowing opium production.

Hamid Karzai, the head of the Kabul government, may be playing a similar
game. His announcement of the ban came just days before donor nations are
to meet in Tokyo to discuss aid to his battered country. Most of
Afghanistan's opium is smuggled across its borders and refined into heroin
for sale in Europe.

Here in Kandahar, Muhammad Akram, the chief of police for four provinces
that produce more than half of Afghanistan's opium, said he had heard that
the ban would be put into effect in stages, a few provinces at a time. He
has received no word that the ban yet extends to his region, but said he
was ready to carry it out it if called upon to do so.

"We have talked to the farmers and said, 'If we help you, will you stop?'
And they have said yes," Mr. Akram said, speaking in the dim light of a gas
lamp during one of the city's frequent power outages.

Basher Muhammad, a wizened man squatting in a field of germinating opium
just outside this town, conceded reluctantly that he would destroy his
lucrative crop if forced to.

"But the farmers will gather and go to the governor's house and demand
compensation," he said.

He said he had spent about $4,000 on his opium fields, including a year's
rental for the land, which he planted with opium in November after the
Taliban lost Kabul. He expects to scrape about 50 kilograms of raw opium
from the capsules of the ripe poppies in April, enough to bring him nearly
$17,000 at current prices.

But even if prices continue to fall, the opium will bring him far more than
the radishes, spinach and okra that he grew when opium was banned. Those
crops sell for pennies a kilogram in the local market.

"If we don't grow opium, we can't live," he said.