That normally would be bad news, but this year it may not be. If the Marines and special agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration we're with have their way, the net revenue to the Taliban from this year's harvest will drop dramatically. They have launched a concerted campaign, as one senior officer put it, to "turn off the opium spigot without turning the people against us."
Notably, the senior Marine commanders here also fought in Iraq's Anbar province and were engaged in creating what came to be called the "Awakening." There, prominent Sunni tribal leaders ultimately were persuaded to stop supporting Baathist and al-Qaida terrorists. Here, they hope to do the same thing with "part-time Taliban" and those who have been supporting the movement.
Col. Randy Newman and Col. Paul Kennedy commanded Marine infantry battalions in Ramadi, Iraq, at the height of the Sunni insurgency. Our Fox News team was embedded with both units during the time when Anbar province was the bloodiest place on the planet. Now these men command regimental combat teams here in Helmand province.
"It's not the same fight, but there are many common factors in every insurgency," Col. Newman told me this week. "We won over the Sunni tribes in Iraq with persistence, patience and persuasion. We have some different challenges here, but we also have some great new tools and many of the same great Marines."
Among the new challenges is opium, which funds much of what the Taliban can do. Among the new tools is the Drug Enforcement Administration, which has the ability to collect very specific, timely intelligence on illicit drugs and the capacity to exploit that information. The upcoming poppy harvest will put all that capability to the test.
Over the course of the next few weeks, while our Fox News team is on the ground, U.S. and coalition forces are going to make the first concerted effort to interdict the harvesting and processing of opium in one of the most dangerous and unforgiving places on earth. If it succeeds, it could well mean the eventual end of the Taliban insurgency -- and even Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida.