And here's the latest United Nations report on poppy cultivation and the
Afghan drug trade, released Thursday (as reported by the AP):

"The Afghanistan Opium Survey 2004 found that cultivation rose 64
percent over 2003, with 323,701 acres dedicated to the poppies that
produce opium. That set a double record, according to Antonio Maria
Costa, executive director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, for
'the highest drug cultivation in the country's history, and the largest
in the world.'"

"Bad weather and disease kept production from setting a record, although
Afghanistan still accounted for 87 percent of the world supply, up from
76 percent in 2003. Opium is the 'main engine of economic growth and the
strongest bond among previously quarrelsome peoples,' the report said.
It valued the trade at $2.8 billion, or more than 60 percent of
Afghanistan's 2003 gross domestic product."

So while the Bush White House points to the recent election of Afghan
President Hamid Karzai as evidence that freedom is firmly on the march,
clearly the drug mules are stampeding. And if the soaring drug trade
numbers are any indication, near-term prospects for countrywide security
and stability are grim. Consider Colombia, where narcotics trafficking
generates a comparable $2.2 to $5 billion annually -- a mere 3 percent
of that country's GDP, let alone a whopping two-thirds of it. And even
with an established government and much more advanced infrastructure,
South America's cocaine capital of the world is hardly a bastion of calm
and equitable prosperity.