NAD-I-ALI, Afghanistan -- As the golden sun sets over the rich fields outside this village of mud houses and turbaned men, farmers tend to their crops, weeding, fertilizing and bringing precious water to the sprouting plants.
It is the kind of scene American planners had in mind in the 1950s when they began transforming the deserts of southern Afghanistan into lucrative cropland.
In one of the most expensive U.S. foreign-aid projects of the time, dams were built along the Helmand River, canals were dug, highways were laid, and new cities grew.
That huge American investment has paid off. The Helmand River Valley is producing a world-class crop that earns huge sums of cash. Farmers all along the valley say they have just planted their biggest crop ever.
But there is a problem: That crop is opium poppies.
Seldom have American good intentions abroad gone so spectacularly wrong.
By United Nations estimates, Afghanistan is now the world's largest supplier of opium -- producing more than 2,200 tons in 1996.
U.S. estimates are somewhat lower, showing Afghanistan as the world's No. 2 producer but coming up fast.
U.S. officials are painfully aware that Afghan land made fertile thanks to several hundred millions of dollars from U.S. taxpayers now produces narcotics for American and European addicts.
Narcotics experts estimate that heroin made from refined Afghan opium accounts for almost one-fifth of the heroin coming into the United States. In Europe, the percentage from Afghanistan is much higher.
Afghan poppy cultivation is centered along the American-irrigated, flood-controlled plains of the Helmand River.
State Department statistics show that more than half the Afghan poppy crop now grows in Helmand province.
Given the chaotic conditions in Afghanistan today -- war still rages in the north, and poor farmers in the south are rebuilding slowly -- there is little Americans can do about it.
The only formal U.S.anti-opium program in Afghanistan is a $250,000 annual crop-substitution effort for the Helmand River Valley.
The opium business is centered in Sangin, on the Helmand River, a one-road market town where plastic sacks of the drug are sold like so much wheat or dried apricots. These main Afghan poppy fields are in areas controlled by the Islamic fundamentalists of the Taliban.
Given the strong prohibitions in Islam against drug use and the entirely public nature of the opium business, it seems logical that the Taliban would have quickly shut it all down.
