OPIUM GROWERS REJOICE AT TALIBAN LOSS

Poor Farmers Till Land To Plant Crop That Brings Cash

KARIZ, Afghanistan -- No one could be more delighted about the departure of
the Taliban regime than the opium poppy growers in eastern Afghanistan.

In July 2000, the Taliban's leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, issued an edict
banning poppy cultivation across Afghanistan, then the world's largest
producer of the flower pod used to make heroin.

For years, the Taliban had used taxes on drugs to finance its military.
That all changed, however, with Omar's eight-line message. According to a
recent report by the UN Drug Control Program, the decree brought raw opium
production in Afghanistan to a virtual halt, dropping from 3,276 tons to
only 185 tons in just one year.

Now that the Taliban has retreated to the mountains, there is an eagerness
among farmers in the irrigated lowlands south of Jalalabad, the capital of
Nangarhar province.

Last week, farmer Ahmed Shah and his neighbors were busy fertilizing and
tilling their small plots of land, preparing to plant poppy seeds that will
be harvested in April, processed into heroin in neighboring Pakistan and
delivered to overseas markets.

"I can make 10 times more with poppy than I can with wheat," Shah said as
two teenage boys turned the soil nearby.

The farmers of eastern Afghanistan are fully aware of the epidemic they
feed with their beautiful flowers. They see the hollow-eyed addicts in the
bazaars of Peshawar when they travel to Pakistan.

"We know we are creating addicts," Shah said. "The only reason we are doing
this is because we are poor. If I could find another job, I would stop
growing poppies."

Samsul Haq, deputy director of the Nangarhar Drug Control and Coordination
Office, estimates that before the Taliban edict, 85 percent of the
Jalalabad agricultural economy was driven by opium production.

"This is a great opportunity for poppy growers," Haq said. "The Taliban is
gone. There is confusion about what kind of new order is coming in. The
farmers are free to plant poppies."

Haq said that unless poppy production is checked by massive foreign aid to
provide the farmers an alternative, Afghanistan is almost certain to return
to its dubious distinction as the world's top supplier by next summer.

The farmers in Kariz, a mud-walled village of 600 families where everyone
grows poppies, see opium as the fastest, surest way out of the wrenching
poverty brought on by more than two decades of war and turmoil.

Haji Saifuddin, a 60-year-old farmer, has been growing poppies for more
than 20 years on several plots he owns near Kariz. He alternates poppy
planting with cotton, maize and wheat.

He said it costs him about $100 for fertilizer and seed for each jerib
(about half an acre) of poppies he cultivates. Saifuddin said his return on
each jerib is about $5,000, a small fortune in Kariz.

But uncertainty about the stability of the new order also has farmers
worried. If the current Nangarhar government -- composed of a triumvirate
of three former mujahedeen commanders -- fails, that might open the door to
rule by a countless collection of local commanders and warlords.

"Most of the farmers are happy because they now grow poppies," Haq said,
"but they are also fearful that these commanders will steal their income
from opium."