THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

Before we invaded Afghanistan, the Taliban had essentially eliminated opium production in all the areas they controlled. And if President Cheney and his W had not been so keen on war, we could have had bin-Laden given to us without a war. And now 13 years and too many deaths later, opium production is rising to new heights for the benefit of the Taliban.

Opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has hit a record-high, the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) wrote in a letter on Tuesday, calling into question the efficacy of the $7.6 billion U.S. counter-narcotics effort aimed at curbing the illicit trade – an important source of funding for the Taliban insurgency, and a major contributor to the country’s rampant corruption.

Afghan farmers grew a record 209,000 hectares of opium poppy in 2013, up from the prior record in 2007 of 193,000 hectares, according to the latest statistics from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. The country’s opium poppy cultivation was valued at $3 billion in 2013 – a 50 percent increase from the previous year – as Afghanistan continues to produce nearly 90 percent of the world’s supply.

Even worse, these figures are projected to climb as security deteriorates in rural Afghanistan and eradication efforts lose steam.

“In past years, surges in opium poppy cultivation have been met by a coordinated response from the U.S. government and coalition partners, which has led to a temporary decline in levels of opium production,” Special Inspector General John Sopko said in the letter sent to Secretary of State John Kerry and other Obama administration officials.

“The recent record-high level of poppy cultivation calls into question the long-term effectiveness and sustainability of those prior efforts,” he wrote.

The record-setting year was hardly surprising. Since the U.S. forced the Taliban out of power in 2001, opium cultivation in Afghanistan has generally been on the upswing.

“All efforts at counter-narcotics in Afghanistan have failed,” said Jonah Blank, an Afghanistan expert at the RAND Corporation in Washington, D.C. “You can’t wage a counterinsurgency and conduct serious opium eradication at the same time. What you’re doing is impoverishing farmers, you’re saying, ‘Trust us, and by the way we’re going to destroy your crops and leave you with nothing.’”

Until 2009, Washington favored a more aggressive eradication approach that frequently had the exact opposite effect as intended, fuelling corruption at the local level. Since Afghanistan's central government is so weak, eradication programs were typically enforced or administered by the country’s powerful warlords, with the tiny fraction of crops that were eradicated usually belonging to their political enemies.

“So the U.S. military was in the business of enriching warlords at the expense of others and always at the expense of poor farmers,” said Blank.

We went from a dicey situation to the worst of all possible worlds thanks to the incompetence, stupidity and malice of a handful of conservatives who should all now be in Leavenworth, but they aren't. At least the heroin will be cheap.