Aghan Poppy Crop

The most effective way to critically disable the Taliban is to drastically reduce their income and delegitimize them among local populations. What has not been achieved on the battlefield may yet be accomplished in the marketplace.

Drug money is funding the Taliban's increasingly numerous and bolder attacks in Afghanistan. Yet, the United States has shifted its policy from eradic...

A small group of Pentagon and USAID officials and American geologists may have found the biggest single solution to permanently transforming Afghanistan's economy and winning the struggle against Taliban.

Our only realistic choice in Afghanistan is serious rural development -- that is, reconstructing the Afghan countryside through countless small-scale projects until food crops become a viable alternative to opium.

Afghan government must protect farmers from Taliban violence, stop participating in the drug trade, and encourage the growth of a diversity of legal crops.

Failed policies in the Middle East could be reshaped by learning from those who have managed to do surprisingly well for themselves: the Israelis, the Iranians and the Afghan drug lords.

UPDATE: In the first high-level talks between the countries in many years, senior U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke briefly met with Iran's deputy forei...