Opium Wars

But in the years since, as the Karzai government has proved too weak to enforce the ban or develop alternative industries, poppy cultivation has revived. In 2007 the United Nations reported a windfall harvest of 200,000 hectares, capping two years of all-time highs that accounted for a third of the Afghan economy. The last report showed a 17 percent rise in poppy cultivation from 2006 to 2007, and a whopping 34 percent rise in opium production, a level expected to be maintained in this year's harvest. According to one State Department official, tens of thousands of hectares of poppies are currently growing right up to the edge of the provincial reconstruction office in the capital and economic center of Helmand.

Just as troubling to onlookers has been the geographic breakdown of the growth. In the northern provinces, where the government exercises a greater degree of control, counternarcotics strategies have generally made production plummet. That didn't work in the south, where five provinces now produce more than 80 percent of all poppies grown in Afghanistan and Helmand alone is responsible for over half the country's cultivation.

Not coincidentally, Helmand and its neighbors are also the most dangerous and divided areas in the country. U.S. Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell reported to Congress last week that the Afghan government has control of only 30 percent of the country, estimating that Taliban forces control 10 percent and local strongmen—who fiercely maintain their independence from both of the country's power centers—run the show in the rest. In such lawless areas, antigovernment forces offer credit lines to poppy farmers and collect taxes on their crop, potentially earning up to $100 million in the process.

In response, U.S. officials announced this fall that more aggressive eradication plans were in order. Thomas Schweich, the State Department official responsible for coordinating the $600 million initiative, said the strategy is to get both stronger and smarter this year, expanding and militarizing eradication efforts while taking care to target strikes only at wealthier farms. In addition, he says, the U.S. is bolstering development and judicial reform programs to provide long-term alternatives to the poppy economy. Officials hope more oversight will head off bribes by the "big fish" of the trade looking to steer eradication teams away from their fields.

"This is not the paradigm we've heard in the past—which was true, to some extent—of the poor farmer that's been growing poppy for generations and has nothing else to grow," says Schweich. "If they were poor farmers with no other alternatives to growing poppy, I wouldn't be eradicating their fields. That's counterproductive. [But some] farmers do have access to markets and are using our own irrigation canals and roads to bring their poppy to market. And that's where you need to eradicate."

But critics warn that boosting eradication efforts in unstable areas could prove disastrous, depriving farmers of their only source of income, alienating a key swing demographic and driving large numbers of people to side with the insurgency. None of Afghanistan's legal crops can compete with the income generated from poppies, estimated by the U.N. at $5,000 per hectare. As a result, they say, most farmers are stuck between a rock and a hard place, with warlords demanding taxes on one side and eradicators on the other. Analysts say removing a main source of income before stable governance is established could make last week's resistance a harbinger of many more battles to come.