POPPY CULTIVATION RESURGING IN POST-TALIBAN AFGHANISTAN

SHERGARH, Afghanistan -- To Mohammad Shahpur and tens of thousands of other
impoverished farmers in Afghanistan's Shinwar region, the green sprouts
struggling from the soil of their hard-worked fields are the keys to their
future.

The tiny plants are poppies. Upon reaching maturity in April, they will
yield opium, the highly addictive tar-like gum that is refined into heroin.

The plants mean food for the farmers' families, medical care for ailing
children, dowries for daughters and deliverance from moneylenders who hold
the titles to their meager properties.

To the United States and other countries, the innocuous shoots are the
source of a contagion that destroys lives, strains government resources and
nurtures powerful international criminal enterprises.

In July 2000, Afghanistan's Taliban rulers banned poppy cultivation in the
2000-2001 growing season in hopes of winning international recognition.
Afghan farmers obeyed, reducing world opium supplies by nearly 70 percent,
about 3,000 tons, according to United Nations estimates. The ban cost the
puritanical Islamic militia the millions of dollars it had earned from the
opium trade to buy fuel, arms and loyalty.

Since the U.S.-led attacks toppled the Taliban five weeks ago, poppy
cultivation appears to be resurging in Afghanistan, threatening to unleash
a flood of heroin next year at lower prices.

Some of it will end up on American streets. Most will be injected or smoked
in Europe.

Kemal Kurspahic is a spokesman for the Vienna, Austria-based United Nations
Office of Drug Control and Crime Prevention, which monitors poppy
cultivation in Afghanistan. Kurspahic said the ban on Afghan poppies had
been "one of the most promising developments in international drug-control
efforts."

The resurgence of poppy cultivation presents a serious challenge for the
post-Taliban interim government that takes power this weekend, and for the
United States and other nations that are anxious to see stability restored
to Afghanistan. Permitting poppy cultivation to continue would fuel
corruption and warlordism and undermine efforts to restore law and order.

But reimposing the poppy ban would deprive hundreds of thousands of
Afghans, already among the world's poorest people, of their only means of
earning enough money to live. The backlash could erode support for the
interim administration, compromising its efforts to lead the country out of
23 years of war-fueled chaos, disease and poverty.

"It would be simple for us to force people not to grow poppies. But there
must be a logic to it," said Haji Abdul Jabbar, the newly appointed
administrator of Ghanikhel, a district of about 1 million people in
Nangarhar province, between the capital city of Kabul and the Pakistan
border. "There needs to be a substitute, and people need to be employed."

But crop-substitution programs and other assistance for farmers must
compete with Afghanistan's other mammoth needs." There is an order of
priorities, beginning with making sure that it (Afghanistan) is not a
training ground for terrorists and making sure there is basic security,"
conceded Kurspahic of the U.N. drug control office, which is looking at how
to eradicate poppy cultivation again.

Shahpur, the farmer, said he regretted his contribution to the narcotics
trade and that he would stop planting poppies if he had another livelihood.
But, he said, only poppies provide enough money to support his wife, three
children and the 12 other members of their extended family.

"It will be a very beautiful year. We will get rid of our loans," said
Shahpur, 26, anticipating the harvest. "We are going to open shops. We are
going to get electricity by building small water dams. We are going to
build mills for grinding wheat."

Some experts estimate that Nangarhar farmers have planted 37,000 to 49,000
acres of poppies, meaning a harvest of up to 2.2 million pounds of opium.
Farmers said they would have planted more if there hadn't been a drought.

The farmers of Shergarh, a ramshackle village of 65,000 people and the
administrative center of Ghanikhel district, said 15 pounds of wheat earn
50 Pakistani rupees, less than $1. The same amount of opium fetches 200,000
Pakistani rupees, or about $3,300, farmers said. The Pakistan currency is
commonly used in the region.

Shahpur's fields are tiny slivers in the vast expanse of farmlands that
ring Shergarh. Nangarhar and Helmand province, in far southern Afghanistan,
produce 90 percent of the country's opium.

Before the poppy ban, most opium was refined into heroin in Afghan
laboratories.

The finished product was smuggled out south through the Pakistani port of
Karachi, west across Iran and into Turkey, and north into Central Asia and
then Russia.

An estimated 80 percent of the heroin was then smuggled into Europe, the
rest to the United States and other countries.

At a drug market in the southern city of Kandahar, dealers said the Taliban
turned a blind eye to them as they sold off stockpiles of processed opium
after the ban. In the past year, business slumped as the supply from last
year's crop dropped off and the bombing campaign prevented drug convoys
from traveling. The dealers expected business to pick up now that the
Taliban are gone and farmers are planting poppies again.

Only 10 percent of the opium supply from last year's crop remains in the
country, said Zulmai, a dealer for three years, who like many Afghans uses
one name. "If they prevent more cultivation, then that 10 percent would be
gone from Afghani-stan, and we would be free of opium. The Afghan people
dislike this business. If there were any other jobs, then we would gladly
get out of this. I hope one day Afghanistan is free of opium."

Around Shergarh, the flat, sun-swept landscape is dotted with trees and dry
mud-walled compounds. In the distance is an imposing wall of snow-coated
peaks and the border of Pakistan.

Some of the fields, tiny plots bound by low dikes and irrigation channels,
are tinged green by rising shoots of winter wheat. But the vast majority
are dirt-brown, with the heads of poppy plants just pushing through the
surface.

The poppies' bright red flowers will fall off in April, leaving a hard
capsule that the farmers scratch to make the opium resin drip out.

Faridullah, 36, who also uses only one name, said he expects to harvest
about 62 pounds of opium, earning more than $13,000, a huge sum in a
country where the average income in 1998 was estimated at just more than
$200 a year.

Normally, poppy farmers take loans from opium dealers and moneylenders to
support their families through the growing season, pledging their harvests
as collateral.

But there was no opium to scrape last April, leaving Shergarh farmers
soaked in debt. Most were forced to put up their homes and fields as
collateral, said Mohammad Murad, 60, the village headman.

Shahpur said he owes 95,000 Pakistani rupees, or about $1,500. "Now, if I
don't grow poppy, I will have to sell off all of my land to pay it off," he
said.

"Before the ban on poppies, people supported the Taliban," said Faridullah.
"But after the ban, they started to hate the Taliban because their economic
base was multiplied by zero."