Meanwhile in Afghanistan, the US has declared an end to its poppy eradication program. Speaking at the G8 summit in Italy, US Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke declared the program a failure.

Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke: “The Western policies against the opium crop, the poppy crop, have been a failure. They did not result in any damage to the Taliban, but they put farmers out of work, and they alienated people and drove people into the arms of the Taliban. So I need to stress this: the poppy farmer is not our enemy; Taliban are. And to destroy the crops is not an effective policy, and the US has wasted hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars on this program. And that is going to end. We are not going to support crop eradication.”