VICTORIOUS WARLORDS SET TO OPEN THE OPIUM FLOODGATES

Sayed Ali welcomed the fall of the Taliban, but the new political and
social freedoms now on offer mean little to the poverty-stricken Afghan
farmer. What is important is that he can grow opium poppies again - he has
already planted his first crop. In the small mud-brick village of Chinar
Khalia, near the eastern city of Jalalabad, Ali and other local farmers are
now looking forward to a bumper harvest around mid-April. The Taliban ban
on poppy-growing, which slashed Afghan opium production by 94 per cent last
year, is over. And the impact on the West will be huge - 90 per cent of
Europe's heroin comes from opium grown in Afghanistan.

'The Taliban order on poppy-growing was false,' Ali said. 'It hurt many
farmers that they could not grow poppies. Now I will earn money again.'

But the wrinkled old farmer, whose leathery skin has been baked nut-brown
after a lifetime in the fields, is not the only one set to cash in. The new
warlords, who have replaced the Taliban across large swaths of Afghanistan,
will earn millions of dollars too. The Northern Alliance has always
indulged in opium production, but now it has captured some of the richest
opium-growing lands in the country.

Of Afghanistan's 29 provinces, 10 grow poppies. Of these the richest are
Helmand in the south, still under Taliban control, and Nangrahar in the
east, which has fallen to local warlords. With massive potential riches
from opium at stake, the province is experiencing fierce factional fighting.

Ali expects the new rulers of the province to encourage him to grow as much
opium as possible. 'Before the ban the government used to collect taxes on
my poppies, now the warlords will collect them. We will have no problems
from them,' he said.

Opium-growing has a long history in Afghanistan, a tradition shattered by
last year's sudden Taliban ban on poppy planting after several years of
unofficial tolerance and profit from the crop. 'Last year was the first
time in 50 years that poppies had not been grown in my village,' Ali said.

During the ban the only source of poppy production was territory held by
the Northern Alliance. It tripled its production. In the high valleys of
Badakhshan - an area controlled by troops loyal to the former President
Burhannudin Rabbani - the number of hectares planted last year jumped from
2,458 to 6,342. Alliance fields accounted for 83 per cent of total Afghan
production of 185 tonnes of opium during the ban.

Now that the Alliance has captured such rich poppy-growing areas as
Nangrahar, production is set to rocket. Helmand, too, is being replanted by
its Taliban rulers, who have abandoned their anti-opium stance and want to
cash in on their remaining sources of revenue.

Western and Pakistani officials fear that, within a year or two,
Afghanistan could again reach its peak production figures of 60,000
hectares of poppies producing 2,800 tonnes of opium - more than half the
world's output.

Alliance factions and other warlords deny benefiting from opium production,
but it is an open secret that nearly all tolerate it. Most are happy just
to cream off the taxes, but others have been more directly involved. Hazrat
Ali, one of the new warlords in control in Nangrahar, ran Jalalabad airport
in the mid-Nineties at a time when weekly flights to India and the Gulf
carried huge amounts of opium to Western markets. During the war against
the Russians, the huge and illicit drugs trade nurtured by the mujahideen
was ignored and tolerated by the CIA and other Western intelligence
agencies in return for their commitment to fight the Soviet Union.

Now, with the Taliban ban on poppy-growing lifted, it would appear that
Afghanistan is facing a return to those days. The main Nangrahar opium
bazaar of Ghani Khel has reopened for business. Afghan opium traders
arriving in the Pakistani city of Peshawar claim 100 of the market's 300
stalls now sell opium blocks stockpiled during the ban. The same is true of
Kandahar, where the city's main opium bazaar escaped the US bombing.

'All our evidence is consistent. They are replanting in a major way,' said
Bernard Frahi of the United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime
Prevention located in Islamabad.

For Afghan farmers it is a simple choice. A farmer can earn £6,000 for a
hectare of opium, compared to just £34 for wheat.

Ali knows opium produces heroin and disapproves of drug use, but he has a
family of 14 to feed and his land has been gripped by three years of
drought. 'I am poor and need money for clothes and food. Perhaps if
Afghanistan becomes rich and there is peace, I will not need to grow
poppies,' he said.

In the quiet Peshawar suburb of University Town, nestled between the
offices of Western aid agencies, a crowd gathers each morning outside a
forbidding steel gate. Inside, the roof of a sprawling mansion can be seen.
The beggars are here for alms. The man who lives here is Peshawar's most
powerful drugs baron and the poor know he can afford to be generous. Other
large houses dotted around Peshawar tell the same story. Locals refer to
them as 'the houses that drugs built'. Peshawar lies on the main smuggling
route south. It was also the home of the Afghan opposition during Soviet
and Taliban rule.

In the lawless Pashtun tribal areas just outside the city limits, opium is
sold openly. It is easy, although illegal, to buy. In a shop on the main
road to Afghanistan, 26-year-old Imran cuts off a 50g piece of sticky, dark
brown opium resin, known as tor. It costs just £7.

Foreigners are not allowed here, but it is just a short drive over the
tribal boundary past police guards who pay no attention to the traffic. On
the wall behind Imran hang a Kalashnikov machine gun and a shotgun - a sign
of the dangers of the drugs trade. But business will soon be good, he says.
The Northern Alliance warlords will see to that. 'They would be stupid to
try and ban the poppies. They make so much money.'

It is estimated that when production picks up, about one million Afghan
farmers will earn £70 million from growing poppies. That is a huge industry
in a country with little other obvious sources of foreign money exchang