Opium Wars

Back in 2003, U.S. officials worried about the drug economy in Afghanistan, where 80,000 hectares (200,000 acres) were being used to grow poppies to supply three-quarters of the world's opium, the main ingredient in heroin and a major source of funding for the country's divisive provincial politicians.

Those were the days. With Afghanistan now growing nearly 200,000 hectares of poppies and supplying a full 93 percent of the world's opium, U.S. officials are stepping up counternarcotics efforts in the restive southern provinces of Afghanistan, a move that triggered a bloody six-hour gunfight last week. The clash, the first in this year's aggressive new campaign to eradicate poppy fields, killed 25 Taliban militants fighting to protect the crops and one policeman fighting to raze them.

U.S. officials say more extensive but targeted eradication is needed to rein in the billions of narcodollars floating around Afghanistan, which they say funds and arms the escalating insurgency. In its annual International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, released on Friday, the State Department insisted that profits from drug production in southern Afghanistan were lining the pockets of warlords supporting the resurgent Taliban, pointing to the contrast between relatively poppy-free northern provinces and the growing production in the volatile south. Poppy eradication, they say, is a necessary evil in the fight to secure the dangerous and strategically critical southern provinces.

With the spring harvest just around the corner, the coming weeks pose a challenge in the U.S.-led effort to crack down on the Afghan drug economy. Two years of record harvests and evidence of a shift toward larger and wealthier poppy cultivators in the south prompted American officials to revise their floundering poppy strategy this year. Now, as spring approaches, their controversial plans to intensify the eradication campaign are being put to the test.

But concerns remain. Will wiping out the fields of well-connected local warlords set a powerful precedent for future planting seasons, or, as critics protest, will the political fallout from the crop eradication create more problems than it solves?

Opium has long played a role in the Afghan economy, but the industry has skyrocketed in the years since the U.S.-led coalition toppled the Taliban government in 2001. The Taliban used to keep production and sales in check by regulating them, collecting taxes from both farmers and traffickers. Following the invasion, the new administration outlawed the trade, initially cutting it as farmers, fearing widespread confiscations, engaged in a panicked sell-off of their goods.