Warlords repel opium mission

Drug lords have attacked and beaten back an Afghan army task force sent to try to stop the booming opium cultivation sweeping the country.

The battle follows the killing of government troops in an earlier clash and has left the United Nations' drug policy in ruins. A total of 400 troops and advisers, led by two senior Afghan officials, were flown to the country's Hilmand province on American transport aircraft, say sources in Kabul.

Hilmand, south-west of Kandahar, accounts for half of the country's booming opium production, with poppy fields now stretching from horizon to horizon. Afghanistan's interim prime minister Hamid Karzai has banned poppy production but so far most farmers have ignored it.

The government mission was to persuade the drug lords to accept UN grants to destroy their poppies. But the force was attacked as it made camp in the province's Kagiki region, with machine gun fire sprayed at outposts.

There were no casualties and the troops say they returned fire. The following day, instead of meetings with local drug barons, officials were told a more powerful attack was being prepared, and were told to leave.

The task force commander ordered a retreat back to Kandahar and the group has now been flown back to Kabul. It appears to be the final defeat for the UN's efforts to stop the crop by paying US dollar grants to farmers. And it leaves Europe braced for a new influx of heroin.

Previously Afghanistan accounted for 75 per cent of Europe's heroin and half of the United States', most of it being sent through central Asia and Russia before arriving in Europe.

One of the ironies of the war against terrorism is that the Taliban - in their final year of power - had eradicated opium production in a bid to gain UN recognition. But with the Taliban's retreat, the warlords have returned, and they are enthusiastically planting the crop once more.

Farmers in Afghanistan receive just one 50th of the London street value of the drug, but this is still enough to provide a good standard of living through a crop that is easy to produce.

Some farmers have just produced a poppy harvest under the noses of allied troops in Logar province, outside Kabul just a few miles from British army bases. But the UN force, ISAF, has a strict mandate limiting its operations to Kabul city, with no powers to interfere in drug cultivation elsewhere.

The UN had pinned its hopes on offering cash grants to farmers in order to destroy their opium crops. But farmers complained the money offered was far lower than the sums they can raise from selling opium on the market. More to the point, the drug barons who make the lion's share of the profits, would never allow it.

"Even if you give more dollars, it won't work," said an Afghan intelligence source in Kabul. "The warlords make the deals. They want the farmers growing opium."

US intelligence reports say 15 per cent of opium cultivation has been destroyed over spring. But in one case, around the eastern town of Jalalabad, UN officials arrived in the opium districts just after the harvest was brought in, awarding farmers the grants in the belief they had destroyed the crop. "It was very funny," said the source. "Those farmers were paid twice."

Opium cultivation was the big " success" story for most of the Taliban's regime. Desperate for foreign currency, they broke the stanglehold of warlords. The farmers prospered as the Taliban organised trucks and storehouses, and eliminated the fiefdoms that had levelled a tax on the opium as it was transported across the country.

By 2000 the industry was worth more than £100million a year, with about one quarter going to the Taliban in tax.

During wars against the Soviets, it was an open secret that the Mujahideen bought arms with profits from the opium trade. Now there are fears of new fighting as drug lords squabble over who controls which poppy fields.