TERROR'S PUSHERS

The Bush administration should be glad the American public's attention
is fixed on Iraq. No, really.

While the news out of Iraq is trending from bad to worse, it's still
better than the news from Afghanistan.

After leading a coalition that successfully ran the Taliban out of
power in 2001, the administration turned its attention to what
President Bush called the "axis of evil," namely Iraq, Iran and North
Korea.

But we seem to have turned away from Afghanistan a bit too
soon.

First off, Osama bin Laden is still on the loose somewhere along the
mountainous border with Pakistan. Second, the Taliban was run out of
power but not out of existence, and it's now making a comeback. The
administration does not have to distort the truth to connect these
people with 9/11, and yet they are once again a growing force in
Afghanistan.

The lifeblood of the resurgent Taliban and its allies in the southern
of the country is opium. Far and away the world's largest supplier of
opium poppies for heroin production, the country is experiencing a
bumper crop of the beautiful but deadly flowers.

According to a U.N. report from Saturday, opium cultivation in
Afghanistan rose a "staggering" 59 percent this year, largely
concentrated in the south. The crop is estimated at 6,100 metric tons,
far more than enough to supply the entire world's demand for heroin.

According the U.N., in Helmand province, cultivation rose 162 percent,
accounting for 42 percent of the Afghan crop. That province is also
the chief staging ground for the ongoing Taliban military operations.

The Bush administration has declared cutting off radical Islam from
its sources of income as a major, worldwide goal, but profits from the
opium crop are large enough to supply an army of terrorists around the
globe. An ABC news estimate puts it at $2.7 billion. Of that, an
estimated $460 million goes to the poppy farmers; the rest is believed
to finance "drug lords, warlords, and the growing Taliban
insurgency."

Unlike Iraq, where the administration's haste to war chased off many
potential allies, the world has committed troops, money and
development aid to Afghanistan. Now, with the Islamic insurgents
renewing their military operations, those allies are starting to ask
whether they are going to be stuck there indefinitely.

Given that the reconstruction in Afghanistan is lagging, many people
there are turning to opium growing to feed their families. The drug
trade accounts for a third or more of the national economy and is far
more profitable than most other options.

It's a situation similar to Colombia.

There, despite the Reagan-era "war on drugs," the cocaine lords have
been fought only to a standoff; they control large parts of the
country and traffic in drugs almost at will. They simply have too much
money, power and influence to be eliminated completely.

Given the nature of Afghanistan's drug lords, we cannot afford the
same outcome there.