IN AFGHANISTAN, TALIBAN TURNING TO THE DRUG TRADE

Farmers Report Threats From Group

KHANISHIN, Afghanistan -- The threatening tracts were pinned on
mosque doors and shop windows, the village elder said. Signed ''The
Taliban," their message was simple.

''They said, 'Cultivate the poppy or we will come and kill you,' "
said Haji Nazarullah, an elder in Khanishin, a village on the fringe
of Afghanistan's lawless southern desert. ''A lot of people are very
scared." According to farmers, elders, and senior police officials,
the Taliban, which condemned the opium trade as ''un-Islamic" while in
power, has allied with drug smugglers in the southwestern province of
Helmand. The threats are part of a worrying slide in security just
months before US forces are due to hand control of the southern region
to a 6,000-strong, British-led NATO force.

The villagers and police say militants have distributed ominous
''night letters" ordering increased poppy cultivation in remote
villages that are far beyond the fragile authority of the Kabul
government. Poppy is the plant from which opium and, eventually,
heroin are produced. The apparent move into the drug business marks a
dramatic turnaround by the Taliban, which almost entirely eradicated
production in Afghanistan just before their ouster by US forces in
2001.

According to Haji Ismael, assistant police commissioner in Khanishin,
the Taliban has turned to drugs for two reasons. ''They want to make
money.

And they want to weaken this government," he said.

American and Afghan aid officials in the provincial capital, Lashkar
Gah, said they had also heard reports of new links between the Taliban
and drug smugglers. A senior Western diplomat in Kabul, speaking on
condition of anonymity, said there was ''some intelligence" of the
linkage but was as yet unable to confirm the origin of the night
letters. ''We don't know if it's Taliban or traffickers purporting to
be Taliban. But someone out there is trying to stimulate farmers into
growing poppy," he said.

The intimidation tactics follow a sharp increase in violence across
southern Afghanistan over the past six months, including a spate of
suicide attacks, roadside bombings, and assassinations of police
officials and pro-government religious leaders.

In total 1,100 people have died in combat violence this year, making
it Afghanistan's bloodiest period since 2001. There are growing fears
of a foreign hand in the bloodshed.

Suicide bombings were rare in Afghanistan until recently, stoking
suspicions that the resurgent Taliban is being trained, financed, or
led by foreign militants.

Last Sunday, Al Qaeda's number two man, Ayman al-Zawahri, issued a
videotaped message praising Taliban leader Mullah Omar for his
victories against ''crusaders and apostates."

Mullah Abdul Salam Rocketi, a Taliban commander turned parliamentarian
for restive Zabul Province, said he suspected Pakistani intelligence
and Arab financiers -- possibly linked to Al Qaeda -- were behind the
surging unrest. Earlier this month, NATO ministers approved plans to
send 6,000 troops into southern Afghanistan, allowing the United
States to scale back its 18,000-strong force.

The Pentagon has not specified how many troops will withdraw, but
commanders have suggested up to 4,000.

But the rising bloodshed has rattled nerves among NATO allies and
exposed political sensitivities about giving the military alliance,
until now a purely peacekeeping force in Afghanistan, a more
aggressive role. The Netherlands, which is due to deploy 1,100 troops
to Uruzgan Province, east of Helmand, has stalled in making a final
commitment over fears of incurring troop casualties. So has Britain,
which is due to take control of Helmand. The BBC, quoting unnamed
military sources, said Tuesday that British generals were considering
scaling back the troop deployment and sending fewer attack
helicopters.

Only Canada has finalized its deployment plans -- half its
2,000-strong force has already deployed to the southern capital,
Kandahar, with the remainder due to arrive in the spring.

A military source in Kabul said Australia had been approached to step
in should the Netherlands pull out of the plan. The British deployment
is certainly daunting.

Helmand is Afghanistan's largest province and also the epicenter of a
$2.7 billion drug trade that, according to a recent UN survey,
accounts for 34 percent of the national economy. While the amount of
land growing poppy dropped 21 percent this year, the UN reported, the
value of the trade was virtually unchanged at $2.7 billion because of
good weather and low rates of plant disease.

The head of the UN drug council in Afghanistan predicted last week
that opium growth rates will rebound next year. Helmand farmers grow
one-quarter of the opium crop, says the UN. Its southern desert is
crisscrossed with smuggling trails running toward the unpatrolled
border with Pakistan.

In such areas, President Hamid Karzai's government has virtually no
authority. In many areas only a handful of undertrained and often
corrupt police hint at the presence of a central authority.

The challenge is evident in Khanishin, a town on the fringe of the
lawless badlands. An ancient fort of towering walls and crumbling
ramparts stands in the town center, pinned between the Helmand River
and a sprawling desert.

The fields along the riverbank are freshly planted with
poppy.

''We planted last month.

It's grown about this much," said farmer Tor Jan, indicating his
little finger.

A group of tribal elders gathered recently inside the fort at
Khanishin to meet the US military commander in Helmand, Lieutenant
Colonel Jim Hogberg. The elders said they would happily grow legal
crops such as wheat.

But the central government had not delivered on promises to help
them. ''Opium is a problem; nobody wants to grow it," said Haji
Nazarullah, who had spoken of the Taliban night letters. ''But if you
want us to stop them, give us something first."

The irrigation canals were broken, fuel to run water pumps was
expensive, and fertilizer was less effective than before, he added.

And meanwhile the Taliban was growing in strength in the area, he
said, ''because most people don't have jobs, so the Taliban pays them
to plant bombs." Hogberg, addressing the elders, said many ''good
things" had happened in Afghanistan, such as last September's
parliamentary elections.

Moreover, he said, about 3,000 soldiers from the US-trained Afghan
National Army would be posted to Helmand next year.

But the American commander also admitted that the Kabul government was
almost invisible in this remote village, which was the farthest south
his troops had ever ventured in Helmand. ''From here south to
Pakistan is all desert.

So you really are the guardians of the southern border of
Afghanistan." Helmand was the center of a concentrated US development
aid drive in the 1960s, so much so that it was nicknamed ''little
America." American specialists laid wide, tree-lined streets in
Lashkar Gah, built a network of irrigation canals, and constructed a
large hydroelectric dam. But since 2001 the province has been a low
priority for the US-led coalition.

Just 110 US troops are stationed in the province, a mix of special
forces and about 110 soldiers guarding the Provincial Reconstruction
Team base in Lashkar Gah. Still, they have come under fire as part of
the wider Taliban resurgence. Three weeks ago, a suicide bomber
exploded his vehicle at the gates of the governor's office, minutes
before a weekly security meeting with Hogberg. Nobody was injured
except the bomber, who died hours later in a hospital. Days earlier a
US convoy was ambushed as it passed through a small village in
northern Helmand. Militants raked the armored Humvee vehicles with
machine-gun fire and, after they sped away, attacked again 2 miles
down the road with rocket-propelled grenades. ''We've never faced such
an ambush around here. Before this the Taliban would just take
potshots at us," said Captain T.R. Crellin of the First Marine
Division, who survived the attack. The new link between militancy and
drugs further complicates the security headache. Until now US troops
have avoided confronting Afghanistan's drug lords -- many of whom have
strong ties to local officials in several provinces -- in order to
avoid undermining the fight against Taliban and Al Qaeda militants.
Now the British military is considering employing more forceful tactics.

The outgoing governor of Helmand, Sher Muhammed Akhundzada, who has
also been accused of involvement in drugs, said he had petitioned the
British ambassador, Rosalind Marsden, to help seal the lawless
southern border.

He said the ambassador replied ''she would think about it."