ISLAMABAD -- The recent crackdown on opium producers by Afghan officials, resulting in the arrest of more than 100 poppy farmers in eastern Afghanistan, promises only to intensify global concerns about the central Asian country becoming the world's largest source of raw material for heroin.
While the U.S. military deployed in Afghanistan continues to hunt for members of the former Taliban regime and the terrorist group al-Qaeda, little global attention is paid to a potentially bigger challenge emerging in the war-torn country.
The outcome of the war on drugs will be determined by conditions involving Afghan politics, economic trends and social values. Yet halting drugs at the source is a more effective way to curtail the world's supply of heroin than arresting end users in cities across the industrialized world.