Reprinted from the Toronto Star Article "Casualties of the war on drugs" by Martin Regg Cohn.

PASHMUL, Afghanistan - SQUATTING under the shade of a mulberry tree, Haji Jamal gazes forlornly at his sun-baked fields and wonders why he ever gave up on drugs.

For decades, growing opium has put bread on the table and cash in his pocket. But this spring, there is no poppy harvest.

And Jamal is a dirt-poor farmer again with too many mouths to feed.

``That was our daily bread, our main source of income,'' he laments. ``By God, we don't have enough food even for tonight . . . How long can we bear it?''

A ban on opium poppy cultivation for this spring's harvest, strictly enforced by the ruling Taleban, comes as good news to Western anti-narcotics authorities who have long cited Afghanistan as the world's single biggest source of opium for heroin production.

Yet for ordinary farmers, the sweeping prohibition on poppies has brought only hardship - and none of the expected benefits.

After ignoring outside pressure for years, the puritan Islamist regime that controls most of the country belatedly stopped collecting taxes on the drug and issued a religious edict last summer. The government enforced its ruling with a speed and severity never before seen in the global fight against narcotics.

From a peak production of 3,300 tonnes last year, accounting for 80 per cent of the West's heroin supply, Afghanistan's rulers have embraced the creed of zero tolerance. Recent United Nations field surveys have borne out Taleban claims that its territory is almost completely poppy-free.

A drug liaison officer from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police was part of a U.N. team that travelled deep into the country's heroin belt in February. Investigators found only 27 hectares of isolated poppy fields had been planted, compared to more than 80,000 hectares the year before.

``We see only wheat, with no poppy seeds - it's an unprecedented event,'' says Bernard Frahi, head of the U.N. Drug Control Program for Afghanistan. ``This is the first time that a country has decided to eliminate in one go - not gradually - these crops on its territory.''

The dramatic change was set in motion last year when the Taleban's reclusive leader had a change of heart. Known as the Amir-ul-Mumineen - the Commander of the Faithful - Mullah Mohammed Omar issued the ban with a warning that ``anyone violating this statute will be punished accordingly.''

Mullahs in village mosques spread the word that opium had become haram, or forbidden. Offenders were thrown in jail and crops of hashar, as the flower is known, were burned in public.

But the Taleban is paying a stiff price for doing the right thing. Isolated by the outside world for its support of terrorists, Afghanistan is receiving none of the generous financial support routinely funnelled to other countries that destroy their poppy crops at the West's behest.

The U.N. Drug Control Program abruptly terminated a $24 million alternative agriculture project in December, after promised foreign commitments fell through. The lack of compensation comes as a bitter surprise to the Taleban, which was counting on outside help to shepherd farmers through the painful transition from a drug economy.

``They promised so many projects, and now they've left so much work unfinished,'' says Syed Gul Alam, who heads the agricultural section of Afghanistan's Drug Control Unit in Kandahar, where Omar is based.

``Why did they do this?'' he asks plaintively as he strolls through the courtyard of a makeshift office decorated with anti-drug posters. ``How can we go back to the villagers after making these promises to farmers? How can we tell them?''

Alam says Afghanistan's farmers need help finding and nurturing alternative crops such as apricots and almonds, and require credit to buy seeds. But he has given up.

``They promised us one gallon of water, but they have given us only a small glass and it is now empty,'' he says.

Whatever goodwill might have accrued to the Taleban for slashing drug production dissipated after its February decision to dynamite the giant Buddhist statues of Bamiyan, which local religious authorities had deemed idolatrous. By destroying the statues, the Taleban regime seemed to have shot itself in the foot.

Opium is still being grown with official approval only in the northeast corner of the country, which is held by the anti-Taleban opposition. The Northern Alliance is supported by many Western countries and still occupies Afghanistan's seat in the U.N., despite controlling only 5 per cent of the country.

The U.N. believes significant stockpiles of opium still exist in pockets of Afghanistan, where factories refine the drug before it is smuggled into Iran. But stocks are declining and the shortage of fresh opium from the fields has driven prices up 10-fold.

Frahi is convinced that this is the beginning of the end for central Asia's historic opium road.

Red and white opium poppy flowers have blanketed farmers' fields in central Asia since the time of Alexander the Great. In the chaos that followed the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, mujahideen fighters relied heavily on the lucrative cash crop to fund their resistance movement.

As the country plunged further into poverty, opium became the bulwark of the economy. Distributors extended credit to farmers for seeds, and farmers used their future crops as collateral.

Afghans acknowledge that their drug economy was allowed to flourish because there were few obvious victims at home. Unlike neighbouring Pakistan and Iran, which are plagued by millions of heroin addicts, Afghanistan has largely escaped the ravages of drug abuse.

Now, it is suffering severe financial withdrawal.

Unskilled labourers who counted on harvesting the milky-white opium for seasonal work as farmhands are jobless and are fast migrating to Pakistan's crowded refugee camps. Lifetime farmers who breezily planted their opium crops now lack the capital to buy seeds for alternative vegetables. Taleban and U.N. officials report that some heavily indebted farmers are selling their daughters or cousins in desperation.

``When we grew poppies, it was like having cash in hand because we got money in advance,'' says Jamal, 70, as he surveys his withered farm.

In the past, farmers didn't bother much with growing food because they could buy bread with fistfuls of money at the local market. Now, they are planting wheat and onions just to eat, but with little success.

A devastating drought that hit Afghanistan in recent years has dried up fields that were once so redolent with poppies that they were visible to satellites. The wave of crop failures has sparked fears that some farmers might revert to opium once more.

``At least we should get something out of this God-forsaken land,'' says Gul Ahmed, 27, Jamal's son-in-law. ``In the old days, even children had money in their pockets and didn't know how to spend it. Now, the money's gone and there's no good work in sight.''

Another farmer, Haji Malang, 65, says hopefully that the villagers are waiting for word that the Taleban regime has had second thoughts.

``When Mullah Omar told us not to plant poppies, we did not plant them,'' says Malang, 65, fingering a tin snuff box as he looks out over his fields. ``And when he tells us it's permissible, we will plant it again. He is our Commander of the Faithful.''