Pubdate: Wed, 07 Feb 2001
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2001 The New York Times Company
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Author: Barbara Crossette

TALIBAN SEEM TO BE MAKING GOOD ON OPIUM BAN, U.N. SAYS

Initial results from a survey of opium-growing areas of Afghanistan in 
recent days indicate that the Taliban may have succeeded in sharply 
reducing the annual poppy crop, astonished United Nations narcotics-control 
officials say.

Last year, Afghanistan was the world's largest producer of opium, which is 
derived from poppies and is the material from which heroin is made.

Poppies are now in bloom in the Afghan fields, allowing aerial and ground 
surveys to be done across large areas to test the ban on opium production 
by the Taliban, the hard-line Islamic movement that rules most of the 
country. The ban was announced last year to skeptical response from 
narcotics experts.

On Monday, the United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime 
Prevention's regional office for Afghanistan and Pakistan said that surveys 
in the northern provinces of Nangarhar, Laghman and Kunar, which together 
contain more than 25 percent of the total land that had been devoted to the 
poppy crop, found no significant signs of cultivation this year. Similar 
reports are beginning to come in from Helmand, which had 52 percent of the 
land devoted to the crop last year. The survey ends on Feb. 10 and a final 
report will be issued sometime later.

Bernard Frahi, a French expert on narcotics and organized crime who led the 
survey teams in Afghanistan from Feb. 1-4, said in a report that his 
mission visited farmland known to include about 2,000 major pockets of 
opium production. The inspection was done by all-terrain vehicles and on 
foot. "Although it is hard to believe," Mr. Frahi, the regional director, 
wrote to his headquarters in Vienna, where the United Nations drug program 
is based, "No poppy field has been identified in the area."

Mr. Frahi said he was accompanied on his inspection tour by drug officers 
from Canada and Norway and one Pakistani agricultural expert attached to 
the narcotics affairs section of the American Embassy in Islamabad.

The narcotics experts found that Afghan farmers were trying to grow wheat, 
onions, garlic and other crops. Afghans told the inspection team, however, 
that they were very fearful about their livelihoods. Alternate crops 
require a steady supply of seeds, fertilizer and water -- all of which are 
in short supply, and Afghanistan under the Taliban gets almost no foreign aid.

Moreover, in the last year Afghanistan has suffered the worst drought in 
half a century.

The World Bank warned today that the country was headed for a major famine. 
Up to a million people are in danger of starving, aid agencies say.

The United Nations issued an urgent appeal today to governments for 
clothing, blankets and tents for the 100,000 Afghans who have fled to the 
western city of Herat to escape the drought and fighting between the 
Taliban and an opposition force that is clinging to about 5 percent of the 
country.

About 500 people have frozen to death around Herat in recent weeks, United 
Nations officials say.

The United States, which under the Clinton administration led a campaign in 
the United Nations to impose sanctions on the Taliban for their refusal to 
hand over Osama bin Laden, the Saudi financier of Islamic militancy, said 
today that it would fly relief goods to the battered country.

Tents, blankets and some water supplies are expected to be flown by the 
United States Agency for International Development to Pakistan, where more 
than 150,000 new refugees need help, as well as to Afghanistan, American 
diplomats said in Islamabad. The plane is scheduled to reach Herat by Friday.
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