"We don't need them for security. We need them because of opium," General Mohammad Daud, commander of the Sixth Corps which covers Kunduz, Baghlan, Badakshan and Takhar provinces told AFP.

"We want help from the Germans to destroy poppies. Farmers are growing it. They sell it to smugglers who take it to Tajikistan and Pakistan."

An advance team of 27 German troops arrived Saturday in Kunduz, 250 kilometers (155 miles) north of Kabul and 60 kilometers (37 miles) from the Tajikistan border.

They are laying the ground for a contingent that will reach around 400 at full strength by mid next-year.

The Germans are taking over a joint civilian-military program, known as a Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT), from US troops with the dual aims of helping in reconstruction and security.

Ethnically-mixed Kunduz is relatively free of the factional fighting afflicting other parts of Afghanistan's north and the guerrilla campaign by resurgent Taliban in the south and southeast.

Ethnic Tajiks, Uzbeks, Pashtuns and Hazaras cohabitate peacefully and security command is delicately balanced between the three main groups, with an Uzbek as governor, a Pashtun as police chief, and Tajiks as the Sixth Corps and 54th division commanders.

The biggest problem, according to Daud, is the explosion in opium poppy farming, particularly in Kunduz' neighbouring provinces. Opium is the raw ingredient for heroin.

Daud's troops destroyed poppy fields around Kunduz last year

"There are no more poppies around Kunduz. We destroyed 100 hectares," the general said.

"But it's a big problem in Baghlan, Badakshan and Takhar."

However the commander of the German troops, Colonel Kurtz Scheibold, said poppy cultivation was "an Afghan problem."

"Now we are here, it's not our task," he told AFP after arriving.

"As a military we are third in line," in responsibility for eradicting poppies, he said.

"We are those who would enable other organisations to work in a secure environment, which we also try to establish with Afghan military forces. So it's like a circuit."

Since the harsh five-year Taliban regime was destroyed by US-led forces in 2001, cultivation of the lucrative poppy crop has taken off across Afghanistan and the country has regained its rank as the world's top heroin producer.

The Taliban had almost eradicated poppies, but subsequent power vacuums and lack of central government authority have allowed it to return.

Kunduz residents and researchers from the International Crisis Groupthink-tank report the existence of refineries, turning opium into heroin, in Badakshan province.

A local United Nations official told the ICG that commanders in Takhor province, where Daud's authority is reportedly challenged, had begun planting poppies this year and were involved in trafficking.

The ICG blamed the growth in poppy farming in the northeast on warlordism and loose security at the Tajik border.

"The entrenchment of warlordism in northeastern Afghanistan and a corruptible border security regime in Tajikistan have fuelled an explosive growth in poppy cultivation in Badakshan province," an ICG report in September said.

Farmers in Mazar-i-Sharif to the west of Kunduz say poppies bring in 10 times the price of wheat crops. In southern and eastern Afghanistan the price is almost 40 times that of wheat.

Daud said he welcomed the presence of German troops.

"For 23 years Afghanistan was destroyed. If any country comes to rebuild it, we're happy."

WAR.WIRE