AFGHAN DRUG TRADE SEEN FLOURISHING

OYBEK CUSTOMS POST, Uzbekistan - Uzbek border guards stand in the freezing
rain, tossing sacks of apples and other luggage from a bus as they search
for smuggled Afghan heroin, the drug that has helped fund the Taliban and
terror groups.

The tough measure is part of regional efforts to choke off the heroin
trade, but experts fear the flow will only increase as Taliban control of
Afghanistan (news - web sites) collapses.

"War and chaos has always been good for traffickers," said Nancy Lubin,
president of JNA Assoc. Inc., a Washington-based research and consulting
group that focuses on Central Asia.

Afghanistan is one of the world's largest opium producers - growing so much
that if it were all refined into heroin and sold in Western Europe, it
would be worth $100 billion, according to some estimates.

Much of the opium filters out through neighboring Uzbekistan, Tajikistan
and Kyrgyzstan, each of which has received millions of dollars in U.S. aid
to beef up border security.

The flow of drugs apparently has continued despite the Taliban being
vanquished in northern Afghanistan by fighters of the northern alliance.

The U.S.-backed northern alliance is itself a major player in the Afghan
drug trade and there has been virtually no change in drug smuggling in the
recent weeks of war, said Antonella Deledda Titchener, Central Asia
representative

for the U.N. Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention.

The battle for Kunduz, a Taliban stronghold and a key center for storing
opium, resulted in an increase in the drug flow as dealers tried to move
their stockpiles into Tajikistan, said Roberto Arbitrio of the U.N. drug
control office.

"Fighting drugs is going to be a vitally important part of the war against
terror," said Charles Heyman, editor of Jane's World Armies in London.
"Money is basically the lifeblood of international terror, and the majority
of that money comes from the drug trade."

Experts say the Taliban imposed a 10-20 percent tax on the opium trade and
earned some $35 million to $75 million that way in 2000.

Many experts say the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, a group allied with
Osama bin Laden (news - web sites)'s al-Qaida network, is a key player in
smuggling drugs into Central Asia.

Afghanistan supplied 75 percent of the world's heroin in 1999, according to
the U.N. Drug Control Program.

But the Taliban cracked down on poppy growing last year and production fell
some 95 percent this year.

The Taliban apparently ordered the crackdown to improve its image, but
stocks in Afghanistan from the bumper 1999 crop were so high that there was
almost no impact on the drug smuggling to Tajikistan, Titchener said. There
are reports however, that smuggling fell to Pakistan and Iran,
traditionally the two main routes for drugs from Afghanistan.

And with the Taliban out of power in most of the country, many Afghan
farmers are again planting poppies.

In Uzbekistan, which shares a long and rugged border with Tajikistan,
stopping drug and weapons smuggling has long been a key priority for the
government, which regards the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan as its key threat.

At the Oybek border post, some 50 miles outside the capital, Tashkent,
customs officials Thursday spent almost three hours searching a bus that
had just arrived from Tajikistan.

Customs agents first took most of the luggage off the bus and tossed it on
the pavement in the pouring rain.

Then Jackie, a German shepherd sniffer dog, ran into the cargo hold to
sniff luggage and the sides of the bus.

Customs agents in green paramilitary uniforms checked the inside of the bus
while border troops stood guard outside.

Each piece of luggage was then put through an X-ray machine that checked
for weapons and drugs. Powdered drugs are usually more dense than their
containers.

At one point, a customs agent pulled a piece of luggage aside when he saw
that it held a large container with a substance that showed up as almost
black on the X-ray machine.

An agent pulled open the bag to find a jar of beef in a thick brown sauce.

"We try and be very thorough," said Abdunabi Umarov, the head of the
customs post. "We have good equipment and that helps."

U.S. aid has helped beef up the post's equipment. In 1999, the post
received a fiber optic scope to use in searching fuel tanks, power saws to
cut open containers and mirrors to look under cars. In summer, the post
received a heroin testing kit.

Drug smuggling at Oybek is down, Umarov said, with only four drug seizures
this year, compared to 13 last year.

But, he added: "Maybe they have just found new routes."