U.S. SEEKS CURBS ON AFGHAN OPIUM CROP

U.S. Wants Conditions Attached To Foreign Aid

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

The challenge will be to persuade the factions likely to govern
Afghanistan to fight opium production and trafficking, when the
groups have shown little inclination to do that in the past.

U.S. officials want to make fighting drugs a condition for receiving
international humanitarian aid. Some of the assistance will likely
include programs to encourage Afghan farmers to give up growing
opium, the raw material for heroin, in favor of wheat and other 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. policy-makers 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, reaching a peak of 4,030 tons last year and
accounting for 72 percent of the world market, according to State
Department statistics.

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 United Nations 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."

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 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, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, said it
is too early to tell how cooperative the alliance will be 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 the 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, but it was derailed by the Sept. 11 attacks.