20 January 2004	Tuesday	27 Ziqa'ad 1424

DUSHANBE: Geography has rendered Tajiks keen observers of Afghanistan and lately they see two worrying trends emerging in their southern neighbour - radicals are establishing bases in the north and poppy fields are multiplying.

Extremists who have been opposing Afghanistan's government following the ouster of the Taliban regime in 2001 are beginning to establish bases in the north, near the Tajik border, border guards officials said.

"The Afghan opposition aims to create bases that would support major partisan actions in the northeastern provinces of Kunduz, Takhor and Badakhshan," said one official.

Guerrillas from Uzbekistan's Islamist Movement, which features on the US blacklist of terrorist groups, had already moved north from their former bases on Pakistan's border, the official said.

The move places the guerrillas closer to impoverished Central Asian countries where they aim to attract recruits and foment unrest, military officials say.

Meanwhile, drug smuggling from Afghanistan, with which Tajikistan shares a 1,340-kilometre border, shows no sign of abating. Afghanistan is the world's biggest producer of opium, from which heroin is made, with 77 per cent of world output.

Much of the production is smuggled through Tajikistan in the north on its way to Western markets. "The Afghans are enlarging poppy planting fields in the northern provinces of the country and at the same time are increasing the capabilities of heroin laboratories," said Khushnod Rakhmatulayev, press officer of the Tajik drug agency.

Following the ouster of the Taliban regime in 2001, opium production in the country has shot up and shows no signs of slowing down. Poppy planting fields have increased by eight per cent in 2003 compared with the previous year, Tajik experts say.

"In the Badakhshan province bordering Tajikistan, the increase stands at 55 per cent," Rakhmatulayev said. Some estimates say that 23 per cent of Afghanistan's working age people are involved in poppy cultivation and that revenues from the illegal drug trade reach up to one billion dollars annually. United Nations figures estimate that this year's opium harvest will yield 4,000 tons of opium from which 400 tons of heroin will be produced.

Officials say it will take years to rein in the burgeoning trade. "The lack of control, the existence of numerous local groups, many of them armed and none subject to the authorities, and their ties to international drug cartels are a serious problem," said Dovud Panjsheri, Afghanistan's ambassador to Tajikistan.

"It will take at least 10 years to solve the problem and only if a strong central government continues to develop," Panjsheri said. Fifteen drug smugglers were killed last year on the Tajik-Afghan border and a record 5.6 tons of Afghan heroin was seized.

Observers say that the trade will not die down as long as profit from poppy cultivation exceeds that from other agricultural products, like grain.

"Afghan peasants are used to growing poppy, which is much easier and more profitable than growing rice, wheat or cotton, which requires a lot of work and expenses," analyst Sultan Khamadov said.

Meanwhile, "drug cartels do all in their power to keep that country an opium producer, and use fear, bribes and blackmail through various official circles the local mafia now permeates," Khamadov pointed out.-AFP