editorial comment Can one article be more confused than this? What do they call a success? When does it become a failure? Was the world much worse when this stuff was legal????

PRESIDENT BUSH visited Colombia on Monday to celebrate that nation's progress in the war on drugs. With the help of U.S. money and military equipment, the Colombians have attacked traffickers, extradited dozens of their leaders and fumigated thousands of acres of coca crops; the result is that coca cultivation has fallen by around two-fifths over the past three years. The Bush administration now hopes to repeat this success in Afghanistan. Last week it asked Congress to fund a $780 million offensive against Afghanistan's opium trade.

The Afghan challenge is tougher by some measures than the Colombian one. In the Colombian case, drug revenue amounts to about 3.5 percent of legal economic output; in Afghanistan the share is more than 50 percent. The opium trade has boomed since the fall of the Taliban regime three years ago, generating payments to farmers of $2.2 billion in 2002-03, 15 times more than in the two years leading up to the Taliban's departure. A determined counternarcotics offensive, particularly one that focuses on crop eradication, risks generating a backlash against the fragile democratic government.

It's a risk that must be taken, however. Drugs are a poisonous basis for development: The profits that flow to ordinary farmers are outweighed by those that enrich traffickers who buy off government officials, retain private armies and undermine the legitimate authority of the state. The more time goes by, the more traffickers are likely to entrench themselves, investing in extra processing factories and so capturing a larger share of the profits. There are signs that this is happening already: In 2002 traffickers captured half of opium revenue, with the other half going to farmers. In 2004 the traffickers' share is around four-fifths.

The United States must press ahead with its counternarcotics strategy before the traffickers' position grows even stronger. That means first and foremost targeting the traffickers and their protectors, who include prominent government figures as well as warlords with whom the United States has worked in tracking down Taliban and al Qaeda remnants. The hunt for terrorists must continue, but not at the expense of consolidating Afghanistan's emerging status as a narco-state.

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