Anguish creased the weathered face of the opium farmer as a US-trained eradication team swept through his farm fields in the southern Afghan village of Dobundi.
As helicopters buzzed overhead, dozens of tractors plowed up Sadullah Khan's sprouting poppy plants, which in two months time would have yielded the sticky resin used to make heroin -- and earned him, by Afghan standards, a generous income.
After failing miserably to curb opium production last year, the Afghan government has launched a renewed eradication drive, particularly here in Helmand Province -- which accounted for more than 40 percent of last year's record yield of 6,100 tonnes. The US government estimates the opium trade generates US$3 billion a year in illicit economic activity.
There is some armed resistance to the campaign in Helmand, where drug gangs and Taliban militants form a powerful nexus against President Hamid Karzai's unpopular government.
Still, counter-narcotics officials expect better results this year, if not a resounding success.
That's cold comfort to Khan, a 55-year-old father of nine who owns 10 hectares of land planted with poppies.
"When they are eradicating my poppy, it's just like they are destroying my home," he said, watching the heavily armed Afghan teams at work -- supported by a handful of US contractors, who rode in pairs through the rolling poppy fields on all-terrain vehicles.
There are fears the program could increase support for Taliban insurgents, but Karzai is under growing international pressure to crack down on Afghan drug production, which accounts for more than 90 percent of the global supply.
Last week, US President George W. Bush called poppy cultivation a threat to Afghanistan's fragile democracy. Bush said he had told Karzai that "to gain the confidence of his people, and the confidence of the world, he's got to do something about it, with our help."
Last year saw an alarming 59 percent rise in opium cultivation to 164,995 hectares, deepening fears that Afghanistan is rapidly becoming a narco-state.
A Western counter-narcotics official said it was too early for an accurate prediction of this year's crop, but he noted some positive signs.
Cultivation will likely drop significantly in the north and northeast while increasing slightly parts of the south, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the issue's sensitivity.
The government, he said, has launched eradication "earlier and with more determination" than last year, and has warned officials they would be fired if they did not take action.
Lieutenant General Mohammed Daoud Daoud, the deputy interior minister for counter-narcotics, said 3,600 hectares of poppy fields have been destroyed nationwide in the past month.
The target is to destroy almost 14 times that figure -- a total of 50,000 hectares -- before the harvest, which runs from April to July, from the south to the colder north.
The Western official said he doubted that target would be reached. But he said he hoped that 15 percent to 20 percent of the planted fields will be eradicated to demonstrate the "business risk" to poppy growers. Last year, only about 8 percent of planted fields were destroyed.
The campaign, supported mainly by the US and Britain, carries a political and military risk for the government and its Western allies. It could generate more recruits for the Taliban militia, which is threatening a spring offensive against NATO forces.
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