The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) released the 2007 assessment of opium in Afghanistan last week, and the figures are grim. Afghanistan now supplies approximately 93% of the world’s opium, and narcotics revenues make up at least one-third of its GDP. Unfortunately, the administration’s new counter-narcotics strategy is unlikely to stem opium production, and may undermine our mission in Afghanistan.

At the center of the strategy is a renewed focus on eradication of opium crops—a tool that has been used for years in Afghanistan and has yet to yield positive results. As Peter Bergen and Sameer Lalwani explain in the LA Times:

[The policy] has been met with growing Afghan skepticism and, in some cases, violence, and has coincided with a general decline in public support for the U.S. and NATO mission in Afghanistan. Why is the policy so unpopular? Most farmers who cultivate poppies do so because few other options — either alternative crops or alternative livelihoods — exist in their part of the world. You simply cannot eviscerate the livelihoods of the estimated 3 million Afghans who grow poppies and not expect a backlash.

Past eradication efforts have succeeded in eliminating only a minor portion of the overall opium crop, and in turn driving the population into the arms of the Taliban (who cast themselves as protectors of farmers’ crops) and increasing the profits of drug traffickers. According to The Senlis Council, a decrease in the total amount of cultivated opium poppy “ratchets up the market price of opium,” “drives up the value of opium-producing land,” creates “strong incentives for farmers to continue cultivating opium,” and produces “a deep conflict between the central government and rural communities that are dependent on poppy cultivation to survive” - circumstances under which the Taliban can thrive.

Yet, under the administration’s plan, eradication will continue to receive the greatest proportion of counter-narcotics funds, raising fears that that strategy will inevitably alienate the local population, making an effective counterinsurgency campaign impossible.

The U.S. must radically reevaluate its strategy: waging war on farmers’ crops is counterproductive and harms America’s overall mission in Afghanistan. It’s time we focus on the traffickers, criminal networks, and warlords who control Afghanistan’s drug economy instead.