SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
It has been over four years now since the last U.S. troops left Afghanistan. But even now, we are still learning new things about the 20-year U.S. presence there. Last week, The Washington Post broke a story about a covert CIA operation that took place in Afghanistan over the course of about a decade. The goal was to degrade the country's opium crop, which points to how U.S. military intervention leads to ripple effects far beyond the battlefield. For more on the details of this operation we are joined by Washington Post reporter Warren Strobel. Welcome to the program.
WARREN STROBEL: Thanks for having me.
DETROW: Let's start with some of the basics. Why was this important for the U.S. to do? Why did people feel like they needed to degrade Afghanistan's poppy crop?
STROBEL: Well, you know, the U.S. got into Afghanistan, and the Bush administration thought it would be a quick war - quickly pivoted into a war in Iraq. And then, after a couple years, the U.S. found itself mired in a really deadly conflict, and soon came to realize that the opium crop, which is one of Afghanistan's main exports, Scott, was funding the Taliban, funding the insurgency and also destabilizing the government the United States was trying to support. So it was this huge roadblock to any potential success. And there were deep, deep debates about what to do, what was possible, how to solve it.
DETROW: Can you walk through exactly how this operation worked? What was happening, what was being dropped from planes, how they carried this out?
STROBEL: So this began in the fall of 2004, and it was in the fall because that's when Afghan farmers typically plant their poppy crop. And what happened is that the CIA overflew poppy fields in Helmand and Nangarhar Provinces and dropped by the billions poppy seeds that they had specially developed. These poppy seeds were designed to produce a plant that produced a lot less opium and heroin than normal poppy plants. They were also designed to come up first, so the Afghan farmers would think that they were the best plants. And they were designed to produce a flower that was very vibrant and red, which also made them attractive to the farmers.
And the hope was that, over time, this strain of poppy plant would dominate in the fields, its seeds would be replanted and over time you would degrade the potency of the overall poppy crop. Repeats had to be done over a period of years to impact the fields, I guess - roughly 2004 to 2015.
DETROW: Did it work?
STROBEL: That was the hardest question. I have to say, just without sounding like I'm whining too much, this was a really hard story to get. It took me nine months. For a couple reasons. It was highly classified. It involved the presidential finding authorizing CIA covert action. And it was hidden sort of in the midst of the past, with different people remembering different pieces, or even some people remembering it in different ways.
All I can say is that people that I trust, I've known for a long time, suggested to me that it did work, at least for a period of time, in some places. But it was a very expensive program that involved, I won't say massive, but regular air drops, lots of air fuel and security and all that. And as one person put it to me, over time, they realized the juice wasn't worth the squeeze.
DETROW: Yeah. Does any of that - this particular operation that you reported out or other ones like it - do you think that's important context for what we're talking about right now - these much more aggressive, overt, out-in-the-open drone and other kinds of strikes on ships allegedly carrying drugs?
STROBEL: I think, in a way, it does. And it's not a direct connection, but there is an indirect connection in the sense that I spent nine months talking to people about the counternarcotics program in Afghanistan, and despite the perhaps temporary success of the CIA program, it was an abysmal failure. There were arguments about what to do. There were arguments in Washington, arguments between allies, arguments with the government of Afghanistan. There was just simply so much money involved that it didn't work.
And I think - I have talked to many people who are long experienced in the war on drugs who believe that Trump's actions in the Caribbean and towards Venezuela ultimately are not going to lead to a major reduction in drug supply. And I think the common denominator here is that neither of these programs is addressing the demand by the U.S. populace for drugs.
DETROW: I mean, we spent a lot of time thinking about how little long-term wins the U.S. got - to put it that way - out of a 20-year military presence in Afghanistan. What is the state of the opium trade in Afghanistan today, in 2025?
STROBEL: So the Taliban, as we know, retook power in 2021. After profiting from the opium trade for many years, they instituted a ban, which was very effective, at least in the first two or three years of their renewed rule. I believe the figure is a 91% drop in opium cultivation. But in recent years, particularly in the last year or so, the United Nations reports that it's crept up again. Interestingly, the opium or the poppy farming has moved from the south, where the CIA sort of attacked it back in the day, to more remote areas of the north. And I'm also told by some experts that there's increased poppy farming across the border in Pakistan. So it just - I think that's further illustration of what we were just talking about - how difficult these problems are to control.
DETROW: Warren Strobel covers U.S. intelligence agencies for The Washington Post. Thanks so much for talking to us about your latest reporting.
STROBEL: Thanks so much for having me.
DETROW: And a note - the CIA declined to comment on Warren Strobel's story. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR鈥檚 programming is the audio record.
