Afghanistan vows total war on drugs

By John Fullerton

Friday February 1, 6:33 AM

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Afghanistan's new interim government promised on Thursday to wage total war on narcotics, saying brigades of tractors would soon plough up opium poppy fields, destroying the source of two-thirds of the world's heroin supply.

"We will be ruthless," said Engineer Pushtun, a spokesman for the authorities in Kandahar province, centre of the biggest area of opium production in south Asia.

The blitz involves a total ban on illegal drugs which would come into force in four or five weeks.

It will apply to the planting, cultivation, harvesting, refining, trading, trafficking and consumption of drugs. Opium was at the top of the banned list, followed by hashish.

Warlords sitting on stockpiles of opium would not be spared in the crackdown.

"We will destroy the narcotics wherever they are and wherever we find them," Pushtun told reporters, "...regardless of whoever it is."

In March and April, tractors will destroy fields of blue, white, red and purple poppies -- the source for what diplomats say is two-thirds of the heroin smuggled into European cities.

REFINED, SMUGGLED, PEDDLED

The opium is refined in so-called "bathtub factories," simple, mobile refineries that can operate from a single room or the back of a truck in remote border areas.

The brown powder known as morphine sulphate is then smuggled through wealthy middlemen to neighbouring Pakistan and Iran.

It is carried in well-armed convoys of pickups and finally fast boats to the Gulf and Turkey before being refined again into high-quality heroin, ready for the streets.

Pushtun said the new government, inaugurated on the back of Washington's declared war on terrorism, was under immense pressure from the world community to stamp out illegal drugs.

"Drugs have been a source of terrorism," he said. "They are a cause of instability."

The Taliban, the fundamentalist rulers ousted by U.S. bombers and Afghan forces in December, banned opium production in 2000 but nevertheless are widely reported to have profited from the illegal trade.

Pushtun said the authorities were dead set against compensating farmers for not growing opium -- it was tantamount to paying people not to commit crime.

Instead, farmers badly need investment, he said. They need better roads, wells, seed and an effective marketing strategy to reach foreign markets.

Pushtun said the government would stamp out the un-Islamic practice of usury -- the tactic used by drug barons to ensnare farmers by advancing cash against future opium production.

Letters detailing the forthcoming offensive against opium production and the drug lords who trafficked in opium had been sent out to district officials.

Narcotics was high on the list of a strategic policy meeting of the Kandahar authorities, U.N. officials and other non-governmental organisations in the city on Thursday, he said.

The United Nations has been carrying out a countrywide survey of opium production, and its report was due to be completed also on Thursday, U.N. officials have said.