Within days, the plastic bags of sticky, black raw opium disappeared from the shops' shelves. The trademark brown handprints that covered the walls as advertisements for the narcotic were slathered in fresh white paint.

Now, in many shops the shelves are bare. In others, brightly colored packets of snack foods hang on the walls and tin cans of cooking oil are stacked neatly across the front.

But the klatches of turbaned men sipping tea on the floors of the open-front cubicles aren't interested in snacks or groceries. They are here to haggle over the price of the raw opium that still leaves Kandahar to be processed into heroin for sale in Europe, with some making its way to the United States.

"Today we have no narcotics in the shops," said a 28-year-old merchant who has sold raw opium on Narcotics Street for four years. "Now people will store it elsewhere. They'll make the exchanges in different places."

In recent weeks, international officials have hailed the crackdown on Narcotics Street as a milestone for post-Taliban Afghanistan. But, as with many efforts to tame the excesses of a country ravaged by years of war and international neglect, the anti-drug campaign here in the Taliban's birthplace has done little more than move the drug trade underground.

Merchants estimate that, of the 40 shopkeepers who sold their wares openly, five quit their businesses, about 20 continue to sell secretly from their stores and the rest are making drug transactions from their homes or other locations.

"We still have dealers," said one merchant, hunched on the floor of his boxlike shop, now devoid of any product -- legitimate or illegitimate -- on public display. The shopkeeper, like each of the half-dozen drug sellers who agreed to be interviewed, spoke on the condition that his name not be used.

The merchants of Narcotics Street, which stretches two blocks in one of the city's busy commercial neighborhoods, said they have grown accustomed to the vagaries of Afghanistan's changing governments. The street -- a chaotic gridlock of pedestrians, horse-drawn wagons and four-wheel-drive vehicles -- has become a reflection of each new government's attempts at social reform.

Before the Taliban took over Kandahar, the street was known as Weapons Place. The shops were stuffed with Kalashnikov assault rifles, rocket launchers and boxes of bullets, shopkeepers said. In a region where banditry and lawlessness were the norm, trade was brisk.

Then the Taliban seized power and abolished the arms trade. Savvy merchants were undaunted.

"When the Taliban took away the weapons, all the shops switched to the narcotics business," said one shopkeeper, a gray turban wrapped around his head and beads draped over one hand.

The price of raw opium jumped dramatically and profits exploded, according to those who made the switch. As a barometer of the money the drug trade brought to the former arms merchants, monthly rents on the tiny shops skyrocketed after Weapons Place was redubbed Narcotics Street.

"Business was great," said the 28-year-old drug seller. "Trucks and cars would pull up to your shop and fill up with narcotics. It was open. Nobody said anything, neither the government nor the local people."

At that time Afghanistan was producing 70 percent of the world's opium, three times the output of Burma, its closest competitor, according to U.S. and international law enforcement agencies.

Two years ago, the Taliban shifted its drug policy and banned the cultivation of opium poppies, merchants said. The ban was largely ignored the first year. Last year, however, the Taliban government "got serious," said one drug dealer.

If a farmer was caught growing poppies, Taliban police would hang poppies around his neck, blacken his face with charcoal and parade him around the village.

But where poppy farmers found fear, drug merchants saw opportunity.

"When Mullah Omar announced the ban, we saw it as a chance for a great profit for everyone, especially in Kandahar," said one Narcotics Street merchant, referring to Taliban leader Mohammad Omar. "I bought everything I could find and stored it."

Raw opium purchased for about $25 a pound at the time of Omar's declaration sold for as much as $300 a pound a few months later, according to dealers here.

Though Omar assailed the negative effects of narcotics in his radio announcements, his government largely ignored the profitable trade on Narcotics Street.

"I didn't stop," said one merchant. "Nobody stopped. There was no ban on buying or selling, just on growing."

The rise in the fortunes of one twentysomething merchant during the Taliban's rule exemplifies the obstacles Afghanistan's new government will face in trying to put the men of Narcotics Street out of business.

The man said he had struggled to support his wife and three children with a used-car business that brought him a monthly profit of about $100. His father's almond and raisin sales were the principal support for the man, his family, his four brothers and their families -- all of whom lived with his parents.

Now, after four years of operations on Narcotics Street, the same young man is the primary means of support for 28 family members. In the best months, he said, he made $6,000 -- a fortune by Afghan standards.

"Before, I was dependent on my father," he said. "He paid everything. Now I pay everything."

This year, he financed his parents' $3,200 trip to Saudi Arabia for the hajj pilgrimage.

In a country where the majority of the population is barely scratching out a living, that kind of story frustrates Kandahar Police Chief Zabit Akram.

"We're trying our level best to ban these bad activities," said Akram, wearing the olive drab uniform of the new police force. "But it's up to you, to America, to make the world understand it needs to help these poor people."

His department doesn't have the money or the manpower to do much more than make radio announcements beseeching farmers and dealers to stop the drug business, he said. On Feb. 14, he supervised the first public burning of a small pile of hashish and raw opium confiscated by his men at road checkpoints.

The merchants of Narcotics Street are feeling some pressure, however. Since the fall of the Taliban, drug prices have dropped sharply because couriers have been reluctant to travel to the Iranian and Pakistani borders, where most of the raw opium is taken, sellers said.

Dealers said the price they receive for raw opium has dropped nearly 40 percent since the start of the U.S. bombing campaign on Oct. 7.

"People are trying to sell now," said one dealer. "When the U.S. attacked, they thought Bush was not only against Osama bin Laden, he was also against narcotics. Some people are afraid if they are caught, the Americans will come and take them to cages in Cuba."

The dealer said he considers the obstacles and the slowdown in the market temporary, however. With a huge percentage of farmers in surrounding provinces already cultivating a new crop of poppies, the curtailment of overt sales on Narcotics Street will only prompt merchants to become more savvy, he insisted.

"I'm buying a satellite phone," he said with an air of confidence.

Kandahar, Afghanistan

Source: Washington Post (DC)
Author: Molly Moore, Washington Post Foreign Service
Published: Saturday, March 16, 2002; Page A16
Copyright: 2002 The Washington Post Company
Contact: letterstoed@washpost.com
Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com

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