Where poppies grow

With renewed fighting, Afghanistan’s opium trade—the largest in the world—is a persistent block to security and development | Priya Abraham

Afghanistan has received little American press attention lately, with occasional reports focusing on continuing fighting. But the efforts of Malaly Pikar Volpi and other development workers like her may make the difference between defeating the Muslim extremists who make up the Taliban and seeing them gradually reconquer the country.

That's because Afghan poppy fields are a persistent backdrop to the war on terror. The country is the world's largest supplier of the flowers that make opium, producing 90 percent of the drug. Drug dealers refine opium into illegal heroin that ends up largely on Europe's streets. Last year, despite massive aid from the United States and Europe, farmers harvested their largest opium crop in years—and the Taliban often grabbed the profits.