From the NY Times:

It is a measure of this country’s virulent opium trade, which has helped revive the Taliban while corroding the credibility of the Afghan government, that American officials hope that Afghanistan’s drug problem will someday be only as bad as that of Colombia. While the Latin American nation remains the world’s cocaine capital and is still plagued by drug-related violence, American officials argue that decades of American counternarcotics efforts there have at least helped stabilize the country. “I wanted the Colombians to come here to give the Afghans something to aspire to,” Mr. Balbo said. “To instill the fact that they have been doing this for years, and it has worked.

Alex Massie asks a good question:

Just to be clear: if Afghanistan endures a half century of civil war – a good deal of it fuelled by American and European drug policies – this will be considered a success. Who are these guys? Characters in an Evelyn Waugh satire?

Alex concludes thus:

You’d say it was unbelievable that you could think Colombia a model success ripe for export except, of course, nothing should surprise one when it comes to our happy drug-warriors who remain hooked on some logic-bending substance vastly more ruinous than anything produced in Colombia or Afghanistan.

Indeed.