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Afghan opium dealers protest raid on shops
Dealers suspicious, cynical; say soldiers want to sell their narcotics
GHANI KHIEL, Afghanistan (AP) - Soldiers stormed in by the hundreds, smashed the bolted wooden doors of ramshackle shops and seized more than six tonnes of opium at Afghanistan's biggest drug market.
The raid this week was the largest show of the interim government's resolve to wipe out the lucrative opium trade that resumed with the fall of the Taliban.
But it went badly wrong.
The soldiers appeared more like a thieving party, ripping the watches off the wrists of store owners, pulling money from their pockets and taking everything in the shops - as well as the opium, shopkeepers said.
"They weren't interested in destroying our opium. They took our opium to sell," said Javed Khan, a store owner. "They were just thieves."
"Look! They just grabbed my watch from my wrist," said Mohammed Nabi. "They ordered us to sit down and then just took everything."
Now residents of Ghani Khiel, about 60 kilometres east of the provincial capital of Jalalabad, are fighting mad - and heavily armed.
"We're ready to shed blood over this," Khan said.
On Friday, a rocket launcher was pointed toward the village entrance. Residents warned they were ready to do battle with the government if a settlement is not brokered by their elders, who were meeting to find a way out of the impasse.
Negotiations won't be easy. Fifty residents are in jail and the entire village is up in arms.
The elders, swathed in voluminous turbans, sat in a stark white cement building in Ghani Khiel. Outside, their bodyguards brandished rocket launchers and Kalashnikov assault rifles, and railed against Haji Abdul Qadir, the interim regime's governor of the eastern province of Nangarhar.
When the opium market flourished, shopkeepers in Ghani Khiel had a routine. They sat in their dusty courtyards on rope beds, sipping tea and waiting for customers.
On Friday, they gathered as usual, but their shops were shuttered and their mutterings were filled with anger.
They accused Qadir of sending soldiers into Ghani Kiel because most residents are loyal to a rival warlord, Haji Zaman Khan. Since the collapse of the Taliban last year, Afghanistan has disintegrated into areas controlled by warlords and their heavily armed men.
Outside the capital, Kabul, the interim regime's rule is weak.
At the entrance to Ghani Khiel, a graffiti-scarred board put up by the deposed Taliban still sits slightly lopsided. It reads: Drug Abuse is the Greatest Evil of Our Society. Let Us Save Our Lives, Save Our Children's Lives.
But inside Ghani Khiel's opium market, store owners say they aren't ready to change.
"When they give us roads, schools, hospitals and something that brings us as much money, we will stop selling it," said Gul Ahmed Shah, a store owner whose long grey beard was shaggy and unkempt. Other shopkeepers agreed, speaking at once, interrupting each other, each in turn complaining about the woeful state of their economy.
"We have nothing to feed our children with," said Qari Saddar.
"Who is going to pay our bills? This government?" Mohammed Naurang asked.
"They can't even bring law and order. There is no security. There is nothing here but opium," said Zamaryar Mahmood.
The vendors say they sell to buyers from Turkey, Iran and Pakistan.
In Afghanistan's poppy heyday - only two years ago - farmers were producing 4,000 tonnes - the world's largest harvest - and selling it for the equivalent of only $40 a kilogram.
Last year the Taliban banned poppy growing, and the price soared to $1,250 a kilogram.
But with the collapse of the Taliban, some farmers tore up their wheat crops to plant poppies, which produce the opium from which heroin is manufactured. Now opium is selling for $185 a kilogram.
Interim Prime Minister Hamid Karzai also banned poppies, but so far most farmers have ignored the order. Karzai's government has offered money to farmers to destroy their crops.
But it's not enough. The government pays about $200 a hectare, while poppies give farmers more than $1,250 per hectare.
The UN Drug Control Program warned it could take a decade to end poppy production in Afghanistan.
Its approach - and that of the government - will be more humane than the Taliban's, involving building roads and schools and creating jobs in an attempt to discourage poppy growing, officials say.
But Khan, the shopkeeper, said the interim government has to first deal with a credibility problem. No one believed the opium the soldiers took would be destroyed.
"You tell them, `If it is the opium they wanted to destroy, then tell them to bring it right here and burn it in front of us,'" Khan said. "Then we will talk about the next step."
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