OPIUM BATTLE LOOMS FOR U.S. DRUG OFFICIALS

Washington Will Attempt To Persuade A New Afghan Governing Body To Stop
Cultivating The Raw Source Of Heroin

WASHINGTON -- U.S. officials are exploring ways to prevent a surge in opium
cultivation in Afghanistan, once the world's leading producer, now that the
Taliban's control is crumbling.

The challenge is persuading the factions likely to govern to fight opium
production and trafficking, when these groups in the past have shown little
inclination to do that.

U.S. counternarcotics officials want to make drug-fighting a condition for
receiving international humanitarian aid.

They expect some of the assistance will include programs to encourage
Afghan farmers to give up opium, the raw material for heroin, in favor of
wheat and other legal crops.

Representatives of U.S. anti-drug agencies have met to begin developing a
counterdrug plan. With efforts under way to form a new multiethnic
government in Afghanistan, the opium issue is attracting the attention of
leading Bush administration officials.

U.S. policymakers had limited interest in it before the Sept. 11 attacks.
Afghan opium is sold mostly in Europe and Asia. It accounts for only a tiny
fraction of the heroin sold in the United States, most of which is from
Latin America.

After Sept. 11, Afghan opium was seen in a new light: as an important
moneymaker for the Taliban militia that harbored Osama bin Laden, the
suspected mastermind of the attacks.

Afghan opium production surged after the Taliban took control of most of
the country in 1996, and reached a peak of 4,030 U.S. tons last year,
according to State Department statistics. That accounted for 72 percent of
the world market.

Citing Islamic principles, the Taliban banned opium, virtually eliminating
it from its territory this year. U.S. officials suspect the Taliban were
trying to reduce the opium supply to boost the price of existing stockpiles.

The ban remains in effect, but farmers began ignoring it after Sept. 11.

"The farmers are poor people and they need money and the opium crop is a
profitable crop for them," said Mohammad Amirkhizi, an official of the U.N.
Drug Control Program in Vienna, Austria.

"If the conditions remain in a way that no one is enforcing the
noncultivation of illicit drugs in Afghanistan, then the farmers will go
back to cultivating," he said.

The Taliban's rivals have not tried to ban opium, and some are believed to
have profited from the drug trade.

The Northern Alliance, which now controls more than half the country, "has
taken no action of which we are aware against cultivation and trafficking
in its area," the State Department said in March.

Asa Hutchinson, the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, said it is
too early to tell if the Northern Alliance will be cooperative in the future.

"Certainly we're not naive that the Northern Alliance does not have their
own interest and history in poppy cultivation and trafficking," he said.
"But it's certainly a new world in Afghanistan, and we're just going to
have to work hard to encourage (an) anti-drug policy."

Hutchinson said the DEA has been working with Afghanistan's neighbors,
including Pakistan, to help block the movement of Afghan opium through
their territory.

S. Frederick Starr, a Central Asia specialist at Johns Hopkins University,
said rejecting opium will be one of four important conditions for any
Afghan faction seeking international recognition and aid. The other
conditions are rejecting terrorism and supporting human rights and democracy.

"Different groups will find it more difficult or easier, but in the end
they'll have no choice," he said.

Amirkhizi said that besides insisting that the next Afghan government curb
opium cultivation and trafficking, the international community should
provide opium farmers with help in switching to legal crops.

The U.S. Agency for International Development was considering such a
program in southern Afghanistan, channeling assistance through a
nongovernmental organization. The plan was derailed by the Sept. 11 attacks.