Afghanistan: Kicking the opium habit?

While the amount of opium being grown is up, the importance of opium to the overall Afghan economy is shrinking.

``About a third of the economy was based on opium last year ... but it's going down,'' U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for south and central Asian affairs Richard Boucher told reporters.

He gave no details about the speed of the decline.

He said such a trend proved there was more economic growth outside the business of opium poppy cultivation. However, he said more efforts were needed to develop economic alternatives to the opium poppy in Afghanistan.

That's great news. The political and economic power of the opium industry needs to shrink if Afghanistan is ever going to modernize itself--and it will also starve the Taliban who the article says are relying heavily on the trade.

UPDATE: Apparently, a big part of the Afghan economy is also based on stolen aid money.