Special Report: Aftermath Of Terror

UNTIL AFGHANISTAN GETS A NEW GOVERNMENT, OPIUM GROWERS ARE PLANTING CROPS AGAIN

AHMADZAI, Afghanistan -- This time last year, the Taliban stopped Gul
Haider from growing his traditional opium-poppy crop. But now that the
Taliban have been ousted from Nangahar province, Mr. Haider is back in
business.

"I just planted today," the stooped 70-year-old tells a visitor, showing
off the two and a half acres he has freshly sown with the plant that
produces heroin. "This is my land."

What Mr. Haidar sees as a cash crop, the U.S. and its allies see as one
more headache to deal with while trying to help build a post-Taliban
Afghanistan. Despite international efforts to curb Afghanistan's poppy
cultivation, Mr. Haidar says every farmer in this region of eastern
Afghanistan also planted opium last week; three other farmers readily
confirmed doing so.

Even the Taliban, the puritanical Islamic movement that took power in 1996,
took years to crack down on opium production. For four years, the Taliban
taxed opium, taking half a kilo (about one pound) or its monetary
equivalent for every jerib of land (about half an acre). Afghanistan
produced three-quarters of the world's opium supply in 1999, according to
the United Nations. But this year, the Taliban successfully banned opium
growing -- whether from Islamic consciousness, promises of aid and
international acceptance, or a simple desire to manipulate prices, it's
unclear.

Afghanistan has produced 185 tons of opium this year -- down from 3,300
tons last year -- according to the U.N. Opium prices plunged immediately
after U.S.-led bombing started on Oct. 7, as farmers fled, selling their
stocks. But prices have since bounced back. Opium goes dry over time, but
doesn't lose value, so farmers who stockpiled until this month are reaping
a windfall.

Shah Rasul, 45 years old, from Kus Saidan village, says he sold four kilos
Wednesday for 45,000 Pakistani rupees apiece: That's about $750 a kilo,
more than seven times the going price of two years ago. Mr. Rasul says he
and his family of 30 people had to live off savings for the past two years.
He sold his stock to Afghans of the Shinwari tribe, who cross mountain
paths into Pakistan, whence the opium proceeds by various routes west to
market. The same day, Mr. Rasul says, he planted 10 jeribs with opium seeds
- -- in effect betting that the new government won't restrict poppy
cultivation or destroy fields already planted. "There is no government
yet," he says. "We don't know what the new policy will be."

The opium planting doesn't surprise Bernard Frahi, Islamabad-based
representative in Pakistan and Afghanistan of the U.N.'s Office of Drug
Control and Crime Prevention. Mr. Frahi says he heard unconfirmed reports
starting in mid-October that farmers had started opium planting in parts of
Nangahar province, as well as remote parts of Kandahar province and other
areas still under Taliban control.

Mr. Frahi says it's too soon to know whether widespread cultivation has
begun, but he hopes to "resume dialogue" with Northern Alliance officials
to get a handle on the situation. Actually, there wasn't much dialogue with
the alliance in the past, because 90% of production was in
Taliban-controlled areas. The U.N. had promised the Taliban aid in
converting farmers to other crops, but donors got cold feet after the
Taliban blew up two ancient Buddha statues in March. Mr. Frahi says the
U.N. got $5 million in pledges over the summer, but then came the Sept. 11
terrorist strikes on New York and Washington.

Even as the U.S. accused them of harboring terrorists, Taliban officials
were accusing the U.S. of ignoring opium eradication. "This was a great
service to the world but still it was not recognized," Suhail Shaheen, a
Taliban diplomat in Islamabad, said during a late-September interview in
his home.

Meanwhile, poverty will remain a strong incentive for opium cultivation,
even among those who agree with the Taliban that it violates Islam. "I am
very poor, I have no money," says Mr. Haidar. "What should I do?"

In Jalalabad, Nangahar's capital, the new governor's brother and adviser,
Nasrullah Baryalai Arsala, says many locals "have nothing ... no money, no
job. What would you do?" He wants the U.S. and Europe to help Afghanistan
create jobs. "If they don't, there are going to be problems again -- like
opium, like terrorism," he warns. "They don't have months; it's a decision
that needs to be made in hours."