AP

The Taliban promised a show. in the high hills along the Pakistan border, members of the strict Islamic group that controls most of Afghanistan planned to seek out and destroy several "hidden nests" of laboratories--each transforming sticky brown opium gum into heroin. More than a dozen Western, Pakistani and Afghan journalists dutifully trooped to eastern Nangarhar province to watch. But when they arrived in the remote Ouch Bandar district, they found only a pile of rubble and a clutch of nervous, bedraggled laborers. Each lab was no bigger than an outhouse. "We are workers and were paid 500 rupees [about $10] a day," said one of the captured men, Ghainullah. "The owners all fled."

The spectacle hardly lived up to its billing. But then again, neither has the Taliban. In the past two months, the regime has labored to put itself in the world's good graces--claiming to have split from Saudi financier and alleged terrorism sponsor Osama bin Laden, agreeing to talks with anti-Taliban forces and, in Ouch Bandar, making a show of attacking the region's powerful drug lords. The efforts have earned the militia little but scorn. Testifying before the U.S. Congress last week, assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs Karl Inderfurth warned that Taliban leaders were "playing a risky and unwise game" by continuing to insist--against all evidence--that bin Laden had left Afghanistan. The Taliban's efforts to combat drugs are no less implausible--and just as worrisome.

Long the linchpin of the Golden Crescent--the opium-growing region that stretches through Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan--Afghanistan has now assumed a dominant position in the volatile area. Data on actual production are scarce. But according to a report by the United Nations International Narcotics Control Board, the country may have overtaken Burma as the world's leading producer of opium, with a 1998 yield of 2,200 tons, up 9% from the previous year. (A little over 10 tons of opium is needed to produce 1 ton of heroin.) Two outside factors helped propel Afghanistan toward that dubious honor: poor weather, which damaged last year's crop in Burma, and stricter enforcement in Pakistan, which reduced last year's opium output to a mere 25 tons, from nearly 800 tons two decades ago. But the Taliban's benign neglect of, and in some cases open cooperation with, poppy farmers also contributed to the bumper crop. Last month the White House cited "numerous reports of drug traffickers operating in Taliban territory with the consent or involvement of some Taliban officials" before decertifying Kabul for failing to live up to its obligations under the 1988 U.N. Drug Convention.

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R E L A T E D L I N K S : Wrath of God Osama bin Laden lashes out against the West in an exclusive interview --TIME Asia, Jan. 11, 1999

Bin Laden-Taliban Clash Poses U.S. Dilemma Is the U.S. better off capturing Bin Laden or having him hobbled by the Taliban? --TIME Daily, March 4, 1998