In Afghan Poppy Heartland, New Crops, Growing Danger

Dunford said Helmand has great potential to develop legitimate industries, especially agricultural processing such as dairy plants and fruit packing. But with U.S.-led forces unable to suppress Islamic insurgents in the province, it has been hard to attract and safeguard legitimate businesses.

According to American and U.N. officials, an estimated 100,000 to 125,000 acres of poppy were planted in Helmand last year out of some 260,000 poppy acres nationwide, and experts predict the figure will be higher this year. The business has become organized, well armed and allied with insurgents such as the Taliban.

"Afghanistan is the largest cultivator of opium poppy in the world, and Helmand is the second largest," said a U.S. official here, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. "We can do well combating poppy in Afghanistan, but if we don't do well in Helmand, we will not succeed."

In an effort to make up for lost time and send a strong signal into the poppy heartland, Afghan authorities backed by the United States and Britain launched an aggressive crop-eradication campaign across Helmand this spring, sending in more than 1,000 police officers, soldiers and other security forces to destroy fields. In the past six weeks, officials said, they have eradicated nearly 9,000 acres, unfazed by bombings and shootings.

Several thousand British troops are scheduled to land in Helmand by midsummer as part of a transition from the U.S.-led coalition to NATO military dominance in Afghanistan. Officials expect the influx to create a tougher environment for both drug traffickers and their Taliban allies.

Although the new alliance between Taliban fighters and drug traffickers would seem to contradict the Taliban's ban on poppies while in power, U.S. officials say the prohibition in 2000 was aimed at driving up the opium price and currying favor with the West, rather than being based on religious or moral concerns.

The regional campaign is one prong of a national anti-drug strategy that includes the appointment of committed new governors in poppy-growing provinces; the enactment of a new anti-drug law last December that strengthens prosecutorial powers against traffickers; the creation of special anti-drug courts; the alternative livelihoods program; and a campaign to educate the public about the health dangers and un-Islamic nature of drugs.

Although less than 10 percent of Afghan opium or heroin ends up in the United States, American officials said they have become deeply involved in the anti-drug effort because they fear that the corruption and criminal behavior associated with the opium trade could destroy a country that the United States has spent vast sums of money and sacrificed hundreds of lives to save.

"Drug trafficking is a threat to the security and the very future of Afghanistan," the U.S. official said. "It is a narco economy but not yet a narco state. If we lose Afghanistan to this thing, which we could, once again we would have a fertile breeding ground for the next Taliban, the next al-Qaeda, the fundamentalists who thrive in unstable conditions."

The issue of corruption is politically sensitive here. Reports have circulated repeatedly of high-level officials being involved in or benefiting from the opium trade. But in several cases, notably Nangarhar and Kandahar provinces, senior provincial officials have proved dedicated to fighting drugs. Last year, opium production fell by 90 percent in Nangarhar.

Now, all eyes are on Helmand, where farmers have grown poppy for generations and where the short-lived Taliban prohibition on the crop six years ago is recalled as a hiatus of hardship and hostility in a profitable tradition.

Afghan and foreign officials hope that, given the certainty of eradication, the threat of prosecution and the offer of legal alternatives, Helmand's drug lords will find something else to do. There has been talk of an amnesty program for those who turn over their profits to the state and swear not to trade in poppy again.

But for small farmers in the parched villages surrounding Lashkar Gah, the incentive to grow legal crops instead of poppy is still marginal at best, while the threat from traffickers against those who resist their demands remains a powerful reality.

"I like growing eggplants because it is not against Islam and it means I don't have to depend on those people," one farmer said. "But to be honest, I do not have much hope that things will change. This little field is the only place you see vegetables. If you go a little farther, you will see that all the other villages are nothing but poppy."