International occupation forces in Afghanistan recently drew unwelcome attention to one of the dirty secrets of that country's post-war economy: The opium poppy trade, a linchpin in global heroin traffic, is very much alive and flourishing.

NATO inadvertently touched off a new firestorm in the battle over Afghan poppy cultivation with propaganda it broadcast over the radio in the poppy-rich province of Helmand, vowing to leave farmers' fields intact.

"Respected people of Helmand," the radio spot reportedly said, "the soldiers of the International Security Assistance Force and the Afghan National Army do not destroy poppy fields. They know that many people of Afghanistan have no choice but to grow poppies...

Rand Beers, who pushed for a swift implementation of incentive and eradication programs when he served as the Bush administration's assistant secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, says he can't figure out what NATO officials were getting at..."It sounds to me like the administration and the government are still struggling with all of the basic questions of trying to contain and reduce cultivation of a drug crop," he says...

Peter Bergen, a senior fellow specializing in terrorism issues at the centrist New America Foundation who recently spent four weeks in Afghanistan, says the Karzai government policy of eradication is "bananas" on all fronts. Bergen says the government has been spending about the same on anti-drug programs as the farmers were making growing poppies in the first place.

Administration officials concede that eradication alone isn't the answer...

Bergen suggests the Karzai government subsidize farmers who grow substitute crops, even though that would involve other logistical difficulties. But why wait, he says, for "a 100 percent perfect solution when the current policy is 100 percent wrong? I don't understand why we put so many eggs in the eradication basket. It's basic common sense that you're going to tick people off."

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