Opium

WASHINGTON -- American combat troops will be thrown into the fight against narcotics traffickers in Afghanistan, where despite a $1 billion U.S. effort, another record opium crop is expected this fall, U.S. anti-drug officials said yesterday. In a briefing for reporters, the officials outlined the new approach as part of a "basic strategy shift" in the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan. Production of Afghan opium in the coming year will provide the entire world's supply of heroin, U.S. officials reported, surpassing last year's record-high production that has defied a concerted international effort at controlling narcotics.

Anne Arundel County police and federal agents have arrested four men on charges of running an opium ring out of the backs of carpet stores in Anne Arundel and Prince George's counties, apparently the first opium arrests in the Baltimore-Washington corridor in at least two decades.Police arrested Hajirahman Alejalil, 47, of the 15000 block of Indianola Drive in Derwood, Prince George's County; Majid Mostafa, 41, of the 10000 block of Prince Place in Largo; and Mehdi Livani, 46, and Touraj Zoulfaghary, 40, both of the first block of Pinkney St. in Annapolis at the stores late Tuesday.

Anne Arundel County police and federal agents have arrested four men on charges of running an opium ring out of the backs of carpet stores in Anne Arundel and Prince George's counties, apparently the first opium arrests in the Baltimore-Washington corridor in at least two decades.Police arrested Hajirahman Alejalil, 47, of the 15000 block of Indianola Drive in Derwood, Prince George's County; Majid Mostafa, 41, of the 10000 block of Prince Place in Largo; and Mehdi Livani, 46, and Touraj Zoulfaghary, 40, both of the first block of Pinkney St. in Annapolis at the stores late Tuesday.

UNITED NATIONS -- With President Clinton and other world leaders coming here tomorrow for a special session of the General Assembly on the world's drug problems, the United Nations' top anti-narcotics official has submitted a two-pronged strategy that moves beyond the conventional approach of intercepting illegal drugs and arresting traffickers.Pino Arlacchi, the executive director of the U.N. International Drug Control Program, proposes the ambitious target of eliminating opium poppies and coca plants, the raw ingredients of heroin and cocaine, in 10 years as well as substantially reducing marijuana.

NAD-I-ALI, Afghanistan -- As the golden sun sets over the rich fields outside this village of mud houses and turbaned men, farmers tend to their crops, weeding, fertilizing and bringing precious water to the sprouting plants.It is the kind of scene American planners had in mind in the 1950s when they began transforming the deserts of southern Afghanistan into lucrative cropland.In one of the most expensive U.S. foreign-aid projects of the time, dams were built along the Helmand River, canals were dug, highways were laid, and new cities grew.

ZHONGSHAN, China -- Looked at through the Chinese prism, opium is a singularly bad thing. On this issue mainstream public opinion is as black and white as a panda.Only if you step out of China, into Hong Kong, for instance, is there a public debate, shades of gray, layers of complexity, both historically and currently. The study of opium then becomes as complicated as an addict's dreams and the solutions to abuse as tortuous as cold turkey.The Chinese government's antipathy toward opium is so intense it colors its relationship to Hong Kong and adds an emotional charge to what, anyway, would have been a most complicated transition.

BURMA -- or Myanmar, more formally -- makes the Western news pages mostly for its repression of the struggling democracy movement led by Nobel peace laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, who is continually harassed and was recently physically attacked while trying to address her followers. But those who dare to take a serious approach to drug eradication are likely to end up in deadlier trouble with the ruling dictatorship, known as the State Law and Order Restoration Council, or SLORC, which has incorporated the booming heroin trade into the permanent economy of the country.

BOGOTA, Colombia -- After more than a decade of criticism over its efforts to combat illegal drugs, Colombia has launched a program designed to destroy every poppy and coca plant in the country within two years.The government of President Ernesto Samper also has promised to strengthen the prosecutions of drug traffickers by tightening plea bargain agreements that judicial officials concede often are too lenient.In many ways, however, Colombia's latest efforts in the seemingly endless drug war appear targeted more at Washington, where U.S. frustration with Colombia's inability to control its illicit narcotics trade is at the heart of increasingly acrimonious relations between the nations.

NATURAL OPIUM: SOME TRAVELER'S TALES. Diane Johnson. Knopf.234 pages. $21. Let's be frank: Not everyone loves to travel. Some people are actively unsettled by the notion of leaving the familiar comforts of home to put up with the hazards of voyaging and the peculiarities of parts unknown.Oddly, these are often the very people who seem to travel the most, out of necessity, perversity or a combination of the two. Or perhaps it's simply that those who travel most romanticize it least, knowing as they do about the anxiety, exhaustion and sense of dislocation that are a traveler's constant companions.

Heroin, the addictive opiate shoved into the shadows during the decade-long reign of cocaine, is making an alarming resurgence in Baltimore and other large U.S. cities in purer form than ever.While Baltimore has always had a steady number of intravenous heroin addicts, officials in treatment and law enforcement say more people are getting hooked now because this high quality heroin can be snorted or smoked.One West Baltimore drug trafficker markets his heroin -- up to 92 percent pure -- under the brand name "Unforgettable."

4 Afghans die in blast outside U.S. Embassy KABUL, Afghanistan: A suicide car bomb targeting a convoy of foreign troops exploded about 200 yards outside the U.S. Embassy in Kabul yesterday, killing at least four Afghan bystanders as people entered the compound for a Thanksgiving Day race. At least 18 others were wounded in the morning attack, said Abdullah Fahim, a Health Ministry spokesman. Police officer Abdul Manan said the explosion was set off by a suicide bomber in a Toyota Corolla.

Dispatches for the New York Tribune By Karl Marx Before achieving fame as a political philosopher, Karl Marx wrote lots of journalism, in Germany, in England and for Charles Dana, editor of Horace Greeley's New York Tribune, then the newspaper with the biggest circulation in the world. John F. Kennedy once said that maybe if Greeley had paid Marx a few bucks more, the Russian Revolution and the Cold War would never have happened, a great joke with a kernel of truth hiding in it. Whatever we make of the answers Marx gave in Das Kapital, these vivid pieces show how clearly he perceived and felt the problems of poverty and ownership in the first stages of industrial capitalism.

WASHINGTON -- American combat troops will be thrown into the fight against narcotics traffickers in Afghanistan, where despite a $1 billion U.S. effort, another record opium crop is expected this fall, U.S. anti-drug officials said yesterday. In a briefing for reporters, the officials outlined the new approach as part of a "basic strategy shift" in the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan. Production of Afghan opium in the coming year will provide the entire world's supply of heroin, U.S. officials reported, surpassing last year's record-high production that has defied a concerted international effort at controlling narcotics.

Five years ago this month, Afghanistan's capital, Kabul, was liberated from the tyranny of the Taliban regime and its "guests," al-Qaida. Five years later, Afghanistan, and indeed the world, lives under the threat of another brutal tyrant: the narcotics trade and the terrorism it funds. Despite this threat, Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who once so passionately announced that counter-narcotics was a top concern, appears to have wilted on the anti-drug message while the opium poppy, from which heroin is derived, flourishes to record levels - the area cultivated increased an astonishing 60 percent over last year, according to the United Nations.

Ruling on funding sustains state law The state Court of Special Appeals ruled Sept. 1 that local school systems in Maryland must provide the same amount of money per pupil to charter schools within their jurisdictions as to regular public schools ("Charter school funding decided," Sept. 2). The court offered a reasonable interpretation of the law. The Baltimore public school system and other school systems have argued, unreasonably, that local school districts should be able to provide in-kind services to charter schools in place of funding.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Afghanistan's opium harvest this year has reached the highest levels ever recorded, showing an increase of almost 50 percent from last year, the head of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, Antonio Maria Costa, said yesterday in Kabul. He described the figures as "alarming" and "very bad news" for the Afghan government and international donors who have poured millions of dollars into programs to reduce the poppy crop since 2001. He said the increase in cultivation was fueled by the resurgence of Taliban rebels in the south, the country's prime opium-growing region.

CHICAGO -- Citizens of democracies often have to settle for politicians with few virtues, but it would be hard to set the bar lower than in the recent presidential campaign in Liberia. One candidate's supporters came up with a novel chant: "Did he kill your ma? No! Did he kill your pa? No! Vote for George Weah!" Liberians, in a show of ingratitude for Mr. Weah's restraint, chose Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, who is the first woman elected to head a national government in Africa. She, fortunately, is also not known to have murdered anyone's parents.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- An elected Afghan parliament was sworn in for the first time in more than 35 years yesterday to face threats from drug lords, rampant corruption and a surge in suicide bombings. President Hamid Karzai, his voice breaking with emotion, said Afghans had won the world's respect with their struggle to build a democracy. But he cautioned that a lot of hard work still lay ahead. "We Afghans have the right to stand with honor and dignity with the international community," Karzai told the assembly.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Afghan police officers suffered heavy casualties when they came under attack by suspected Taliban insurgents overnight in a police station in southern Afghanistan, police officials said yesterday. Six policemen were killed and two were wounded in the fighting, which lasted from midnight until 3 a.m., according to the police. Three other police officers were also killed Friday in two other attacks. The largest attack occurred in the Garmser district of Helmand province, one of the most lawless parts of Afghanistan and the biggest opium poppy region.

My mother, who bore four children in five years to a husband who traveled on business, used to restrain my adventurous baby sister in her crib with his old neckties. So she could get a nap in the afternoon, my exhausted mother would put the four of us, all under the age of 6, out the front door. And lock it. It is safe to say that we would be visiting my mother in jail from our foster homes if she were raising us today. That was life in the 1950s, what humorist James Lileks calls "the Golden Age of bad parenting advice" in his new book, Mommy Knows Worst (Three Rivers Press, $18)