There's a good article in last Sunday's New York Times about how eradication of the opium crop in Afghanistan is displacing poor farmers and their families and sending them deeper into poverty. Meanwhile, opium production is thriving in areas with a heavy Taliban presence.

"...the crackdown in the country's far north is unlikely to stop the flow of opium and money to the Taliban in the south. In Zabul - the home province of Taliban spiritual chief Mullah Omar - poppy production grew by 45 percent last year.

Helmand province, a Taliban stronghold, grew so much opium last year that if it was a separate country, it would rank as the world's top opium producer, according to Gretchen Peters, author of "Seeds of Terror," on how the Taliban is bankrolling itself through drug smuggling...

Poppy fields in Taliban areas are so dangerous that eradication teams comb them for bombs before trying to destroy them. Last year 78 government agents were killed trying to destroy fields in the south. By contrast, the worst they faced in [the northern province of] Badakshan was crying farmers."

On a related note, I was just reading this horribly uncritical article from CBS about Colombian Special Operations Forces joining U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

The article quotes a "top U.S. official" as saying, "The more Afghanistan can look like Colombia, the better."

How's Colombia looking these days?

Drug war violence and chemical spraying of coca fields have led to Colombia's enormous internally displaced population, the second largest in the world behind only Sudan. Chemical spraying, in addition to decimating the fields of poor farmers and forcing them away from their homes, is also poisoning civilians and contaminating food in rural areas.

The world U.S. officials are envisioning through the lens of the drug war is truly terrifying.