KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Rivers flooding, US soldiers at the border and corrupt militias losing their jobs and weapons -- life as a drug smuggler in southern Afghanistan isn't what it used to be for Ahmed Jan.
Getting convoys of 60 or 70 off-road vehicles, each filled with a ton of dry opium resin, through a day's drive from southern Kandahar city to the border with Iran has become complicated in recent months, he tells AFP.
"It is much more difficult to get stuff out of the country so it's only a few secret routes that are running, like rivers of drugs," says Jan, a rotund man in his 40s using a pseudonym.
His problems are an indication that Afghanistan's fight against narcotics is paying off. President Hamid Karzai came to office last year pledging to wage a 'jihad' or holy war on drugs, backed by the US and other western governments.
With between 40 to 60 percent of Afghanistan's economy generated by opium in 2004, both the US and the UN have warned that the country is tottering on the brink of becoming a "narco-state".
After three years of focusing on battling the Taliban as the Afghan opium industry spiralled, the US has pledged 780 million to battle narcotics in the country over the next year, and tightened security along the border.
Border checkpoints in Afghanistan, previously staffed by militia commanders in the pockets of the smuggling mafia, are now manned by US forces and American-trained soldiers from the fledgling Afghan army.
Opium prices have dropped sharply because traffickers can't move their vast stocks out of Afghanistan.
Last year, dry opium resin was selling for 142 dollars per kilo at the farm gate at harvest, according to UN figures.
Now it sells for around 100 dollars, according to Attatullah, an opium grower in Zhare district, about 30 minutes' drive outside Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban movement.
"The American soldiers are blocking the routes," 36-year-old Attatullah tells AFP, standing knee-deep in a field of poppies which are beginning to burst into flower.
Afghanistan's extreme weather has also helped stem the drug trade. After seven years of drought, the landlocked nation has finally seen rain and many smuggling routes which crossed dry riverbeds en route to Pakistan and Iran are now blocked by flowing water.
A third factor has been the disarmament of militias, which after fighting the Soviets and then joining the US against the Taliban have now been removed from their posts as part of a UN-backed drive.
"People who were disarmed had a very good business running checkpoints so now they will be compelled to find other forms of income like drug-running," Jan says.
"Because of disarmament it's much harder to get enough guns for our convoys."
The convoys are always heavily armed. Each of the 60 or so 4x4s travels with five to 10 people who are paid between 1,600 and 2,200 dollars each for the risk involved.
As a lower-ranking smuggler, Jan equips four or five vehicles to travel with the larger convoy while the bigger operators provide up to 10 vehicles each.
"There is over a ton of opium in each Land Cruiser, and we expect them to defend the cargo with their lives," said Jan.
But for all the inconveniences now facing smugglers and the corrupt officials who help them, it is farmers used to planting nothing but opium who stand to lose out most from the crackdown.
An internationally backed eradication team arrives in Kandahar province in mid-April to tackle the poppy fields.
According to a joint UN-Afghan government survey Kandahar is one of five provinces where opium cultivation has risen since the new year, despite plummeting production in the rest of the country.
New police chief Lieutenant General Mohammed Ayoub Salangi, installed by Karzai last month to stem the province's drugs trade and growing lawlessness, said an eradication strategy was being worked out.
"We will have a meeting with government officials, the army and the eradication force to decide whether and how much to eradicate," he told AFP.
However the farmers will lose a year's income if their crops are wiped out, while a government strategy to provide them with alternative livelihoods is only in its infancy.
Smuggler Jan warned that widespread eradication could fuel support for the Taliban insurgency in the south.
"People can't rise up themselves if their fields are destroyed but they can lend support to the Taliban who are all still living in the suburbs of Kandahar," he said.
04/11/2005 11:31 GMT