Source: New York Times Pubdate: November 30, 1997 Contact: JOINING WITH THE TALIBAN IN A NEW WAR ON DRUGS By Raymond Bonner ASHKARGAH, Afghanistan This grim, remote town is the capital of Helmand province, the opiumgrowing capital of the world. Once dubbed Little America because of all the aid workers here, the province is now controlled by the Taliban, the Islamic fundamentalist movement that forces men to grow beards and women to stay at home, amputates the hands of thieves, and strips tape from cassettes because music is considered evil. The Taliban has been widely condemned for autocratic conduct and has been accused of providing a safe haven, and training camps, for terrorists. But last week, the new head of the United Nations' drugcontrol agency sat down with Taliban leaders and offered them economic assistance. The reason: the group's religious strictures ban drugs of any kind, and it has declared its intention to stamp out the cultivation of opium poppy, the base for heroin. Western democracies, which got into bed with unsavory regimes to fight communism, are now finding allies who are rather unpleasant and unreliable in the war on drugs. The United Nations and its top drug fighter, Pino Arlacchi, need the Taliban to meet a publicly declared goal of eliminating drugs around the world within a decade. No one doubts that Arlacchi's vision is audacious. But this serious, energetic Italian academicturnedpolitician has been asked if he is not also naive. After all, more drug battles have been lost than won. Latin America, for example, is littered with the remains of wellintentioned projects to wean peasants off growing coca. Unlike their cocagrowing counterparts in Latin America, however, Afghan farmers do not have a long history of harvesting poppy. Twentyfive years ago, poppy production here was 200 tons; last year, it was 2,800 tons. So Arlacchi is convinced he can succeed. Twenty years ago, he noted, opium was grown in just about every country across Asia, from Turkey to Thailand. Now, he said, the war can be concentrated on just two countries, Afghanistan and Burma; together they account for 90 percent of the world's opium supply. Arlacchi has begun here, where the Taliban's militancy works in his favor. The Taliban's religious fervor clashes, however, with a secular reality opium poppy has been a major source of their income. And there is widespread skepticism among U.S. officials and United Nations diplomats over which will win out. But even the skeptics think it is worth testing the Taliban, which controls 90 percent of the poppygrowing areas of the country. Western governments will also be tested because the poppyeradication project is going to cost at least $25 million a year for 10 years in Afghanistan. For at the core of Arlacchi's program are alternative development projects. Give farmers the means to grow crops other than poppy, the theory goes, and they will become lawabiding citizens. Will Congress contribute America's share for a United Nations project? With the money going to the Taliban, liberal human rights activists might unite with conservatives to oppose the spending. Anticipating problems, Arlacchi is assembling what he calls a "council of wise men," prominent world leaders from government, industry and the arts, to help him raise money. It was only after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 that amber fields of grain gave way to bright fields of poppy. As the country sank into war, everything fell into disrepair, from tractors to irrigation systems; fertilizer and seeds have been hard to come by. So farmers turned from wheat, melons, cotton and their traditional crops to poppy, which is labor intensive but yields more dollars per acre than traditional crops. Last year, for example, a 60yearold local farmer named Agha Mohammad planted 14.5 acres in poppy. For his harvest, he was paid $7,920 by drug smugglers. So this year, he is planting three more acres, he explained last week as three of his small sons chased away birds trying to feast on the newly sown poppy seeds. Mohammad, who has a long snow white beard, is a tenant farmer. The land owner, Hazad Mohammad, said he took in $16,528 last year from growing poppy. In a country where the per capita income is $100 a year, it is not easy to imagine that these men would give up this revenue source. But both men insisted they would. "We are only growing opium to support our families," said Mohammad, whose family numbers 23. "If we can be assured of irrigation water, we'll cultivate the crops we did before the war." On the edge of the field is a small canal. It is a channel of the Boghra irrigation system, which was built in the 1960s with U.S. aid money. It is an impressive project. Stretching for 40 miles through flat, desert land, the main canal passes low, thick mudwalled houses set among orchards and small vegetable plots. Green shoots sprout in the plots that get water; camels and donkeys wander in the fields. Before the war, the canal's waters irrigated 61,000 acres, making this region the bread basket of Afghanistan. Now the canal is filled with 15 years of silt, and most of the watercontrol gates are rusted. The irrigation system can be repaired so that farmers can again grow wheat, onions, and apples. But then drug traffickers will still be able to offer the farmers two or three times as much for poppy. "That's why we need incentives and sanctions," Arlacchi said, as he walked from Mohammad's poppy field. The incentives will come from the West, in the form of development aid. The sanctions will be applied by the Taliban, of course. Authoritarian enforcement may be distasteful to the West. So were many of the dictators Washington dealt with during the Cold War.