TAKING THE BLOOM OFF THE POPPY

As Afghanistan's drug trade goes, so goes the country. It's a sad
admission, but an honest one from President Hamid Karzai, who this
week got to the essence of his nation's challenge by saying, "The
fight against drugs is actually the fight for Afghanistan." Drugs
generate over half of the country's national income, and Mr. Karzai
rightly emphasized this crisis at a foreign donors conference on
Afghanistan in Berlin, which ended Wednesday.

An expected outcome of the meeting is a commitment by Afghanistan's
neighbors to more tightly control cross-border trafficking. Also
planned is more foreign aid for eradication and crop replacement of
poppy fields (about 400 Afghan farmers are experimenting with saffron,
the world's most expensive spice).

This endangered new democracy can use all the antidrug assistance it
can get. Since the ousting of the Taliban in 2001, poppy cultivation
has proliferated, accounting for two-thirds of the world's opium. A
nation-building experiment now threatens to turn into a narco-state
hatchery.

Mistakes have been made, such as putting Afghanistan's regional
governors in charge of eradication, when some of them were involved in
poppy growing. But stepped-up international commitment, and Kabul's
renewed effort (Afghan troops just raided and destroyed 28 heroin
factories), are welcome signs that serious attention is finally being
given this problem.