Afghanistan Still Rife With Corruption

Sitting in an Mi-8 helicopter, heading back to Kabul with American poppy-eradication advisors, I recognized that I had just had my first encounter with corruption in Afghanistan -- and the United States' dismal efforts to address it. It was early 2005, just before the spring opium poppy harvest, and I had been liaising with eradication advisors sent to villages in eastern Nangarhar province, formerly a prolific poppy cultivator. A well-implemented cultivation ban by the then governor, Haji Din Mohammad, forced over a 90 percent reduction in planting. The few poppy fields I saw were limited to remote areas and were still several weeks away from blooming into fields of brilliant red and pink with white trim. Despite a transfer of authority in the province, the outgoing governor and the incoming governor, Gul Agha Sherzai, had orchestrated the most successful poppy ban and eradication campaign in the country. In 2005, Nangarhar was a poster child of the Afghan war on drugs.