AFGHAN OPIUM CULTIVATES NEW CONVERTS

Provincial Farmers Helping To Boost Production Again

KHALA-E-KHUJA, Afghanistan -- Said Mohammed snaps off the head of a poppy plant and holds it in his palm.  The petals are gone and the bright-green bulb is scored with thin, black lines where he drained the milk to make opium gum.

In the field around him, young apple trees grow in neat rows, the ground between them filled with tall poppy stalks.

Wardak province, where Mohammed lives, is famous for its apples.  But the farmers here have caught on to a new crop, one for which Afghanistan is infamous.  After farmers came from the traditional poppy-growing provinces of Nangahar and Helmand last year and showed them how to grow the crop in return for a cut, many local farmers like Mohammed sowed poppy this year alongside their wheat and apple trees.

"Last year we planted a little and it went well, so this year we planted all over.  People planted poppy because they needed the money," said Mohammed, adding that wages from a job at the local health authority and earnings from the other crops he coaxes from his 5 hectares are not enough to live on.  A hectare equals about 2.5 acres.

Nearly two years after the fall of the hard-line Taliban regime and the installation of a US-backed government in Afghanistan, the country looks set to retake its title as the world's number one producer of opium.  Tempted by lucrative gains and untroubled by the possibility that the local government would try to prevent them, farmers in many regions of Afghanistan are harvesting poppy this year for the first time, antinarcotics officials say.

Burma, part of the Golden Triangle of drug-producing countries that also includes Thailand and Laos, is the second-biggest producer of opium.

The spread of the crop in Afghanistan has offset government and internationally backed backed efforts to eradicate poppies in traditional growing areas.  The government eradicated about 20,000 hectares this year in the southern provinces, according to Mirwais Yasini, of the country's Counternarcotics Department.

While official estimates for this year's crop won't be available until October, Antonio Maria Costa, head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, said in June that "neither the surface under cultivation nor the volume of output are likely to change significantly."

The number of hectares dedicated to poppy growing rose to 74,000 in 2002, with output of about 3,400 metric tons, according to UN estimates -- 70 percent of world production.  Afghanistan's record year was 1999, when the country produced 4,600 metric tons.  A metric ton equals about 2,200 pounds.

With an average price of $350 per kilogram, about 2.2 pounds, opium brought about $1.2 billion into Afghanistan last year, a significant economic distortion in one of the poorest countries.

It is an important source of income to warlords and Taliban fighters, according to Afghan and foreign officials.  Much of Afghanistan still is controlled by regional warlords, whose commanders tax the opium industry or buy the drug from farmers, officials say.

"We don't yet have central government control all over the country," Yasini said.  Mohammed's valley, where poppy crops are visible from the main road, is barely an hour and a half from the capital.

Yasini said Taliban remnants also are making money from opium.  The traditional growing areas of Nangahar, Helmand, Uruzgan, and Kandahar provinces are former Taliban strongholds.  "The drugs are helping the terrorists.  The terrorists are helping the drugs.  The terrorists are helping the money launderers," he said.

But as the government and its foreign allies grapple with the problem, short-term solutions seem elusive.

In a recent interview, Bill Rammell, the British Foreign Office minister with responsibility for drugs, said Afghan output probably would not decrease in the next few years, as programs like building the Afghan law enforcement agencies and creating economic alternatives kicked in.

"A lot of what we're doing at the moment is trying to work out what will actually work," he said.  "You can waste a lot of money going nowhere unless you get it right."

Eradication efforts have proved of dubious worth.  About 17,000 hectares were destroyed last year under a $30 million program led by the British government, in which farmers were given $1,750 per hectare to destroy their crop.  But anecdotal evidence indicates some farmers planted poppies this year under the impression, however erroneous, that they would be paid to kill it.

Britain and the United States are leading an effort to train police and border guards, spending about $150 million over three years to train about 60,000 officials.  Meanwhile, the 11,500-strong US-led coalition that is fighting Taliban and Al Qaeda remnants says combating drugs is not its responsibility.

"That's not what we came here to do, and it's currently not in our plans," said Colonel Rodney Davis, spokesman for the coalition.  "Our soldiers are focused on stability operations and on hunting down anticoalition forces."

The main problem is finding an economic alternative for farmers, said Mohammad Reza Amirkhizi, head of the UN antinarcotics operation in Afghanistan.

A farmer who grows a hectare of opium poppy can make $9,000 to $15,000 if he produces about 45 kilograms of gum, compared with about $2,000 for a hectare of potatoes.  Even if the farmer leased the land, which the majority in Afghanistan do, he probably still can clear $4,000 on $9,000.

"That's a lot of money for a poor farmer," Amirkhizi said.  "With that money he can marry off his children, buy a motorbike."

Until prices fall, he says, nothing will compete.  When the Taliban banned cultivation in 2000, after profiting from it for years, the price of raw opium shot from about $30 per kilogram to between $300 and $700.  Despite a surge in production, prices are at record highs.

Some Western officials say the answer lies in stronger interdiction.  Many of the fields given over to poppy are controlled by organized provincial landowners and commanders, they say, not starving farmers.

"The idea that this is poor farmers trying to feed their families is a fallacy," a Western diplomatic official said on condition of anonymity.

Even though Mohammed's poppy crop was largely destroyed by blight, he eked out 3 kilograms of gum, which he sold for about $1,000.

"Of course, I'll plant it" next year, he said.  "I know it's not good for people, but what can we do?"