SURGE LIKELY IN CROP OF AFGHAN OPIUM POPPY

Experts Debate Whether To Pay Or Force Growers To Halt Farming

International drug control authorities believe that opium poppy production
in Afghanistan will increase dramatically next year, and are debating
whether to pay or force growers to destroy their spring crops.

Afghan officials said that controlling opium farming is one of newly
installed leader Hamid Karzai's top three priorities, and a senior U.S.
official said it is now a "major, front-burner" issue for the Bush
administration.

But officials agree it will be difficult to stop opium growing,
particularly in sections of the country where the new government has
limited authority -- such as Helmand province, the world's most productive
poppy-growing region.

"Afghans leaving the country have reported that farmers are going back to
poppy cultivation," said Mohammed Amirkhizi, a senior policy advisor in the
U.N. Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention in Vienna.

He said the United Nations has not been able to verify the extent of poppy
farming, but that "our expectation is that production will go back up to
[the level of] previous years. The international community is extremely
concerned."

Two years ago, Afghanistan produced more than 70 percent of the world's
opium, which is used to make heroin. But the Taliban banned poppy farming
last year -- whether the goal was to halt the business in response to
international pressure or to drive up prices remains unclear -- and this
spring's crop dropped by more than 90 percent.

Now, the expectation that poppy production will skyrocket has set off an
international battle over how to respond. While some experts advocate a
one-time buyback of the spring crop, others want to rely primarily on law
enforcement. All seem to agree that in addition to punishing regions where
poppy growing continues, international donors should reward regions that
fight opium production, providing them with generous funds for economic
development.

The new Afghan government is committed under an agreement negotiated in
Bonn this month to work aggressively to eliminate poppy growing, but
officials say it will take time. Not only is opium the largest cash crop in
the country, but many farmers rely on loans from drug traffickers to pay
for their fall planting and survive through the winter. Because the poppies
were planted in October and November, the farmers have already taken those
loans and will have no way to repay them if they don't harvest their fields.

The Washington representative of the Afghan government, Haron Amin, said
last week that he expected Karzai to announce a renewed ban on poppy
growing immediately, but Karzai did not mention it when he was sworn in on
Saturday. Other drug control officials said the new prohibition was still
under negotiation.

With the change in government in Afghanistan, some senior Bush
administration officials have proposed a one-time buyback of opium as an
emergency measure. However, a U.S. official involved with the issue said
the idea met stiff opposition at international meetings on Afghan opium. He
said many officials wanted to rely on law enforcement and on pressuring
growers to destroy their crops.

"We are not considering any kind of a buyback, and no illicit crop
subsidies," said the U.S. official, who argued that paying for drugs --
even to destroy them -- could set a dangerous precedent. "

While the United Nations and the United States have agreed in principle to
provide billions of dollars to rebuild Afghanistan and to help farmers
leave the poppy-growing business, that assistance will be long-term and
most likely will not be widely available next spring, the official said.

Agencies are looking next year to approaches such as reducing the pool of
migrant labor available to harvest the poppies and extract the opium by
providing laborers with jobs on road construction and other public works
programs.

But others believe more unconventional approaches will be needed in the
spring if the poppy crop is as large as expected.

Knut Ostby, the U.N. Development Program's representative in Afghanistan,
said that his agency and others tried for years to encourage Afghan poppy
farmers to grow other crops through economic incentives, but that it was
only the strict Taliban prohibition that worked.

"Some form of compensation seems to be the only way to take care of next
year's crop," Ostby said. "To have farmers otherwise not harvest their crop
would be very difficult for them, and unlikely to work."

A one-time buyback would be risky because it could encourage farmers to
grow poppies in the future, he said. "But the reality is, there are not so
many other options right now."

At the height of poppy cultivation in the late 1990s, Afghanistan produced
more than 2,000 tons of raw opium annually, according to U.N. estimates.
After the Taliban poppy growing ban, the figure dropped to about 185 tons
this year.

U.N. officials report that before the Taliban's anti-opium edict, about
half of all Afghan opium came from the irrigated fields of Helmand province
in the south -- not a remote or hidden area, but rather some of the
country's best and most accessible farmland. Much of the rest came from the
eastern provinces of Kandahar and Nangahar. And a small but increasing
amount has been grown in the northeastern province of Badakhshan, under the
control of the Northern Alliance.

International drug control officials worry that Helmand, in particular, has
once again become a center for poppy growing. The new government does not
have complete control of the area -- the main road that runs through
Helmand on the way to Kandahar and Herat is often described as being among
the most dangerous in Afghanistan.