TIME RUNNING OUT IN THE OPIUM WAR

James Meek In Kabul Finds Reasons To Doubt Northern Alliance's Pledge To
End Production

With only a few weeks left before the peak of the opium poppy planting
season in Afghanistan, time is running out for western agencies to offer
alternatives to farmers who are planning to harvest the drug next year. US
anti-narcotics officials spoke this week of the need to give aid to farmers
who would otherwise have little alternative but to plant poppies. Yet
farmers with hungry families are already having to make the tough economic,
moral and legal decisions involved in deciding what crops to grow. Poppy
seeds are normally sown at the end of the year. So far, there is no sign
here on the ground of any representatives of the west's war on drugs.

Yunis Qanuni, the interior minister of the Northern Alliance, which now
exerts a loose control over much of Afghanistan, said this week that he was
committed to ending the country's status as provider of up to 75% of the
world's heroin.

"One of the basic plans for the future of our country is the elimination of
the growing production and sale of opium," he said. "Once we have peace all
over the country, then we can take action."

There are, however, reasons to doubt his words. The alliance turned a blind
eye to small-scale opium poppy cultivation in the areas it controlled even
before the collapse of the Taliban. It still does not control the big
poppy-growing areas in the south. And apart from heroin, Afghanistan has,
for the time being, virtually nothing that the rest of the world wants to buy.

Bribes

"Now is not the time for planting or harvesting anyway, so we'll see," said
Omar, a Kabul heroin dealer. "We'll see whether these were just words of
the alliance. Maybe they, too, will take bribes."

Asked whether a combination of western help for farmers and action by an
Afghan government would stop opium production, Omar - not his real name -at
first said it would.

"If there was serious government pressure, the peasants would stop growing
poppies, especially if they were given free fertilisers and free seeds for
other crops."

He paused, and thought again. "Then again, the peasants might choose not
to. When they're earning so much from the poppies, it's not very likely.
People will still grow poppies in secret. People get richer quicker that way."

Omar, 25, cheerful and relaxed in a hunting green sports jacket, white
shalwar kameez and black and blue synthetic flip flops, insisted he not be
identified or photographed, but otherwise seemed unconcerned about any
threat of arrest.

He is part of an international heroin smuggling network. He receives
prepared heroin from a factory in Jalalabad and sells it to clients using a
Kabul grocery shop as a cover. The collapse of the Taliban and the arrival
of the alliance had introduced a certain caution in the trade, he said, but
he believed it would be temporary.

"We have the stuff. It's ready, but we're waiting," he said. "We're not
selling to anyone we don't already know. We're just hold ing back a little
bit. We don't want to be the ones chosen as an example for punishment.

"As long as there's no legal government controlling the sources of
production, as long as the [heroin] factories haven't been destroyed, the
trade will continue."

Last week Asa Hutchinson, head of the US drug enforcement administration,
said recent events in Afghanistan had given the west "a rare opportunity to
influence 70% of the world's supply of heroin."

At the same time, he put his finger on the key problem. "It's so ingrained
in the economy of Afghanistan and the economy is so wrecked that it's an
easy thing for the population to turn back to."

Easy it is. The economics of poppy cultivation are compelling. The seven
kilos of seed required to sow a single hectare cost a million Afghanis,
about £13. That hectare would be expected to produce roughly 10 kilos of
khanka, the raw material from which heroin is made. Each kilo sells for up
to 2m Afghanis. In other words, from planting in January to harvesting in
July, £13 has become about £260.

Abdullah, a farmer in the agricultural district of Bagrami on the edge of
Kabul, said he had grown poppies four times. When the white flowers
bloomed, he took pride in his crop. "All the same, your soul hurts. But we
needed to feed our families."

Abdullah, who also asked that his real name not be used, said people like
him needed help if they were not to plant poppies again. "We need industry
to be working again," he said. "We need free fertiliser and seed. We need
bread, we need work, we need education."

The conventional wisdom, reported by international drug monitoring
agencies, was that poppy production under the Taliban went through two
phases, one where it was legal, another where it was all but ended by an
effectively enforced ban.

According to Omar, however, the Taliban's crackdown was never as real or
complete as it appeared to the outside world.

"They broadcast their ban on the radio to show the world that they were
putting pressure on the growers, but in fact there was a lot of it going
on," said Omar.

"They all took bribes to allow people to carry on growing. Close to the
city, where the fields were visible to everyone, in cluding foreigners,
they punished people who grew poppies, they pulled up the crops, they
burned them."

Omar said that the fall-off in opium production in the latter years of
Taliban rule had as much to do with drought as with an enforced ban.

Abdullah said that despite the lure of easy money, many Bagrami peasants
did not want to plant poppies, knowing that Islam considers heroin to be
forbidden. "The Taliban said: 'Look, plant it, we'll send it abroad to
where the unbelievers live'.