Pubdate: Thu, 14 Mar 2002
Source: Economist, The (UK)
Copyright: 2002 The Economist Newspaper Limited
Contact:  http://www.economist.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/132

WHAT THE TALIBAN BANNED

With the Taliban Toppled, Afghan Opium is Flooding Iran

FROM the point of view of their Iranian neighbours, the Taliban did two 
good things. Their leader, Mullah Omar, banned the cultivation of opium 
poppies, and he enforced that ban brutally. Iran's leaders much prefer 
Afghanistan's new interim prime minister, Hamid Karzai, to his iron-fisted 
predecessor, but wish he was tougher on drugs. Although Mr Karzai has 
banned both poppy-growing and drug-trafficking, he cannot stop the trade.

What the Afghans grow, Iranians smoke or inject. At least 2m Iranians are 
addicted to opium and its derivatives, morphine and heroin. Mr Omar's ban 
may have been a cynical ploy to win diplomatic recognition, but it caused 
production to plummet and the price of opium to quadruple in a few months. 
Impoverished Iranian addicts suddenly applied in record numbers for help in 
kicking the habit. Overcoming its revulsion for the Taliban, Iran sent 
experts to Helmand, Afghanistan's main poppy-producing province, to 
encourage farmers to grow other crops.

All this happened at a time when Iran's domestic drugs policy was becoming 
more open and effective. Muhammad Falah, the man in charge, encouraged 
non-governmental organisations to set up rehabilitation clinics, spoke out 
against the mass imprisonment of drug addicts, and even argued for the 
distribution of clean syringes in jails. Such ideas were unthinkable in the 
bad old days, when the government's aim was to disguise the problem.

America attacked Afghanistan last year at poppy-planting time. Farmers in 
Helmand took advantage of the Taliban's disarray to sow 35,000 hectares 
(86,000 acres) with poppies and the UN expects this year's harvest to be 
almost as bountiful as the bumper years of the late 1990s. The local 
warlords, who probably profit from the trade, pay little heed to Mr Karzai 
or his police. Poppies sprout fast: a first crop will be harvested by the 
end of April; a second will be ready in June.

Iran has strengthened security along a border already crawling with 
soldiers and paralleled by immense trenches, impassable even by a 
self-navigating camel with a bellyful of drugs. In two weeks earlier this 
year, the security forces in the border province of Sistan-Baluchistan 
seized six tons of drugs and killed, they say, 90 smugglers. Mehdi 
Morassaie, the province's anti-drugs supremo, hopes to keep prices high. In 
the main market in Zahedan, the provincial capital, opium is still 
relatively expensive, at $750 a kilo. But in Tehran, where the stuff 
usually costs far more, the price has fallen from $2,000 a kilo last 
November to around $1,300. After the harvest, prices will surely fall further.

Iran's leaders are understandably frustrated. After helping bring Mr Karzai 
to power, they now have less influence over the Afghan drug industry than 
before. Muhammad Khatami, Iran's president, says he wants to carry on 
helping with crop substitution, but the warlords of southern Afghanistan 
are not interested. Nor is America. An Iranian official laments that 
America's new chumminess with Afghan warlords may preclude a serious effort 
to crush the trade on which they depend.
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