Heroin a fear factor in Afghanistan

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DARA NOOR, Afghanistan -- On a steep mountain road ahead of a blind curve, a Red Cross worker dies at the hands of an unknown attacker. Just around the bend lies the possible reason: an opium poppy field.

Afghanistan's $1.2 billion drug trade is blooming, bringing violence that is driving away aid groups while Islamic extremists and warlords apparently profit.

The agencies that monitor the pulse of conflict zones point to a rise in ambushes and execution-style slayings that coincide with the southeast's autumn harvest of the opium-producing flowers, also the source of heroin.

"It's absolutely true that security is worse in places where people are growing poppies," said Diane Johnson, Afghanistan program director for Mercy Corps. She said the Portland, Ore., organization has suspended operations indefinitely in the country, but Margaret Larson, a spokeswoman in Portland, said that was not the case.

A member of the group was killed Aug. 7.

"Narco-terrorism" has become an increasingly entrenched factor in the violence that's meant to keep southern and eastern Afghanistan -- a key opium poppy region -- off-limits to outside assistance, said Paul Barker, country director for the charity CARE.

"The revenue from the poppy trade in Afghanistan is more than all the humanitarian aid combined," he said.

Other countries have committed roughly $500 million to rebuild this central Asian nation of dusty, gasp-inducing deserts and mountains. Poppy revenue brought in $1.2 billion last year, according to the U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime in Afghanistan.

About 90 international relief groups operate in Afghanistan, but most have curtailed drilling wells, vaccinating children and rebuilding school systems in the deadly southeast.