Afghanistan update

With opium production again at new record levels, the Afghan drug effort is regularly being called a failure in the press these days, so naturally officials are calling for stepped up efforts (rather than smarter ones).
But it’s getting harder for them to get away with the usual. More and more these days (stimulated by Misha Glenny’s earlier article in the Post), we’re starting to hear the statement (as in this excellent OpEd by Neal Peirce) that The drug war is directly feeding international terrorism. Not drugs. The Drug War.
And even the public is catching on — in a recent poll (conducted by Senlis), almost half of Britons opposed destroying the poppy fields, 74 percent opposed spraying, and 80 percent said they would support “Poppy for Medicine” programs.
Jacob Sullum has more in America’s Taliban-Support Program:
With luck, Afghanistan could become the Colombia of the Middle East