Drug control officials said the decision would probably result in a boom of opium cultivation beginning in about two weeks, the start of growing season.

They believe the turnabout was motivated by the need for more funding by the Taliban and possibly terror groups, as well as recognition that the government would be hard-pressed to control the cultivation of poppies after a US attack.

The price for a kilogram of Afghan opium has plummeted in the last two days from $500 to about $100, according to United Nations narcotics-control officials, who attribute the drop to a rapid selloff of stockpiles because of fears of an imminent attack.

''Our sources tell us that people who have stocks of opium are trying to get rid of them as quickly as possible,'' said Mohammad S. Amirkhizi, senior policy adviser at the UN Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention in Vienna.

Meanwhile, the United States has renewed pressure on the United Arab Emirates to crack down on financial transactions that are believed to be linked to drugs and the Qaeda terror group led by Saudi exile Osama bin Laden, two administration officials said.

Since the Taliban took over much of Afghanistan in 1996, the drug trade has boomed, producing about 70 percent of the world's opium, which is refined in laboratories to make heroin. An estimated 90 percent of Europe's heroin supply last year originated in Afghan fields.

But in July 2000, the Taliban's supreme leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, prohibited farmers from growing poppies, calling it a violation of Islamic law. Visits by UN officials to the main cultivation regions in the southern Helmand and Kandahar districts in November 2000 and last April and May found that the edict had reduced cultivation by 95 percent in Taliban-controlled areas. Relatively small amounts grew in areas controlled by the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance.

But it has become clear that the country accumulated vast stockpiles of opium even before the ban took effect, say drug officials. Rather than eliminate the drug from Afghanistan, the ban has only made it more profitable for those who are selling it by driving up its price, they say.

The price per kilogram, which at the time of Mullah Omar's ban was around $30, reached $500 last month, before the recent sell-off, authorities said.

''As a result of the ban, whoever has these stocks benefited greatly from increasing prices,'' Amirkhizi said yesterday.

Some specialists have questioned whether the Taliban's edict against growing poppies was real or just a way to drive up prices.

''The opium going out of Afghanistan hasn't gone down at all,'' said a US official who follows the global drug trade, speaking on condition of anonymity. ''They have increased production dramatically over the last three years and found themselves swimming in opium, and they have been moving it out to reduce their stocks, as well as reap bigger profits.''

Farmers openly pay local Taliban officials a 10 percent tax per kilo on their opium production, and traders pay a 20 percent tax to other Taliban leaders, Amirkhizi said. ''After that, what they do and who gets what cut is uncertain.''

Most of the drugs produced in Afghanistan are transported along an ancient trade route across Iran, Turkey, the Balkans, and then into Europe. A substantial amount of opium grown in northern Afghanistan, as well as in the Jalalabad region, goes through Central Asian countries of Tajikistan and Uzebekistan, through Russia, and then into Europe.

But UN and US narcotics-control officials say that drugs are also moved over land from Pakistan and then by boat to the United Arab Emirates, as well as by cargo planes between the southern Afghan city of Kandahar and Dubai. Cargo planes have been flying that route at least twice weekly in violation of UN sanctions against Afghanistan.

''The Emirates is one of the transit countries by virtue of its geographic location,'' said one US official. ''From the UAE, it's on the way to Europe in serious quantities.''

Officials at the United Arab Emirates Embassy in Washington did not return phone calls yesterday seeking comment. But a former US official with ties to the Gulf region disputed whether the Bush administration was concerned about the United Arab Emirates as a transit point for drugs. Instead, the former official said, there were renewed US requests to Gulf states to clamp down on financial transactions going to bin Laden's group.

Amirkhizi said he now expects farmers to plant poppies soon in fields throughout southern and eastern Afghanistan. Many farmers, he said, were hit hard by the ban against growing poppy and a devastating drought, now in its fourth year.

If the United States strikes Taliban targets and the Taliban lose control over much of the country, he said, the drug trade will flourish.

''No security and no order in the country would mean that the production again would widely develop this year,'' Amirkhizi said. ''Harvesting season is in about four months. If we don't come out of the crisis period by then, there will be nobody to control the production.''

This story ran on page A1 of the Boston Globe on 9/26/2001.

Source: Boston Globe (MA)
Author: John Donnelly , Globe Staff
Published: September 26, 2001
Copyright: 2001 Globe Newspaper Company
Contact: letter@globe.com
Website: http://www.boston.com/globe/

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