TALIBAN, AL QAEDA APPEAR TO BE DUMPING STOCKPILES OF OPIUM ONTO WORLD MARKETS

The Taliban and al Qaeda seem to be dumping their stockpiles of opium on
world markets as their grip on Afghanistan loosens, say European narcotics
agents and United Nations officials.

Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S., Italian police have
intercepted a growing amount of heroin derived from Afghan opium and
smuggled through the Balkans on its way to Western Europe.

Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network raises a large part of its
funds through this traffic in opiates, says Col. Paolo Poletti of Italy's
financial police. The Guardia di Finanza, the Italian tax police also
responsible for tracking Mafia money, helped impound a delivery of heroin
in Rome as well as in the Austrian region of Tyrol last week.

The Italian authorities' impression is shared at the U.N. Drug Control
Programme in Vienna, which says that falling opium prices in Afghanistan
suggest that the supply of opium has risen significantly since Sept. 11. A
kilogram of raw opium that cost $700 (782.16 euros) before the Sept. 11
attacks sold for $100 in subsequent weeks, and currently trades for about
$300 a kilogram, says U.N. analyst Thomas Pietschmann.

'Opiates for Cash'

Afghanistan accounts for 75% of global opiates, and 90% of the heroin in
Europe, according to the U.N. Afghanistan's opium stockpiles are controlled
by the ruling Taliban, al Qaeda and allied drug barons, say European
investigators. The U.N. says the apparent sell-off since Sept. 11 must have
had the blessing of the Taliban. "In such a tightly controlled society, it
couldn't happen without elements of the regime being complicit and
profiting," says U.N. spokesman Kemal Kuspahic.

The Taliban regime's motive for the sell-off, Mr. Kuspahic says, was "to
exchange stocks of opiates for cash in case they have to flee the territory."

Most opiates produced in Afghanistan are smuggled to Europe via two main
routes: through the territory of the former Soviet Union, or through the
Balkans via Iran and Turkey. Interceptions on the southern, Balkan, route
are on the increase. Once in Europe, opiates are distributed mainly by
Albanian Mafia, many of whom are connected to ethnic Albanian rebels in
Macedonia and Yugoslavia, European investigators say.

Last week on a highway to Rome, Italian narcotics police under Lt. Col.
Gianpaolo Mazza stopped a Peugeot station wagon driven by two Bulgarian
heroin couriers whom the police had been surveilling electronically. The
driver panicked, says Lt. Col. Mazza, and told police that seven kilograms
of Afghan heroin were hidden inside the spare tire. A key in the couriers'
possession led police to a truck in a Tyrolean village. The truck contained
an additional 23 kilos of heroin.

The Italians tipped off Bulgarian police about a depository where they
believed the rest of the shipment was stored. But when Bulgarian police
raided the site, all that remained were acid-filled bins used for refining
the drug. Lt. Col. Mazza says Afghan heroin arrived in Bulgaria in
shipments of 300 to 500 kilograms. Bulgarian Mafia pay Afghan drug barons
about 18,000 euros ($16,105) per kilogram, he says. In Italy and elsewhere,
Bulgarians sell the drug to Albanian Mafia in smaller amounts for about
30,000 euros per kilogram. The drug sells on the street for 60 euros to 75
euros a gram, Lt. Col. Mazza says.

Czech Concerns

Drug-enforcement officers in the Czech Republic fear the Taliban is trying
to use their country as a major gateway to Europe for Afghan heroin. Jiri
Komorous, director of the Czech National Drug Center, told journalists last
month that he had information about "a possible huge consignment" of heroin
that Afghan organizations tried to supply to Europe in anticipation of a
U.S. attack.

"It's generally known that the drugs come from Afghanistan, Pakistan and
the al Qaeda network," says Oldrich Dvorak, a narcotics investigator with
the Czech police's department of organized crime.

For a while, the Taliban seemed to be cooperating with U.N. efforts to curb
opiate production in Afghanistan. Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar
banned poppy cultivation as "un-Islamic" in July 2000, and he reaffirmed
the ban last month. The U.N. says that only 185 cubic meters of opium were
produced in Afghanistan this year, down from 3,276 cubic meters last year.
But the U.N. says much of the bumper harvests from 2000 and 1999 were
stockpiled.

Since Sept. 11, the U.N. says, farmers in some parts of Afghanistan have
resumed poppy cultivation. The U.S.-led military intervention has meant the
suspension of a U.N. program to develop alternative crops, to which the
U.S., Germany and Iran were the main financial donors.

The U.N. doesn't know how big the Taliban-controlled stockpiles are. On
average, 10 kilograms of opium are needed to make one kilogram of heroin,
depending on the raw opium's morphium content and the efficiency of refinement.