Opium industry is funding the Taliban

Politicians have long suspected that the centuries-old opium industry is funding the Taliban and other insurgents in Afghanistan. But direct intervention is tricky for US troops. If a key part of their counterinsurgency campaign is to win the hearts and minds of Afghans, the thinking goes, Americans can't be seen as the face of an effort to burn fields and eradicate a livelihood that is illegal but central to the country's fragile financial system.

Currently, the US provides only indirect support. Its policy leaves it to the Afghan government to contain the opium trade. By international agreement, British military forces are designated to support the Afghan effort, but they generally do not take an active role against the trade. With opium production there skyrocketing, the US House of Representatives last week passed a $6.4 billion aid and reconstruction package for Afghanistan that contains a major counternarcotics component. The legislation would create a new position in government that would develop and coordinate a "coherent counternarcotics strategy" for all US government entities working in Afghanistan. The measure includes an anticorruption initiative that would cut funding to Afghan local and provincial governments found to be connected to Islamic terror organizations or narcotics traffickers. The bill, passed by the full House but not yet the Senate, would also require the US military to provide logistical support to as many as 150 US Drug Enforcement Agency personnel, such as flying them in and out of the field to conduct operations.