widely? Did they reach farmers under insurgent control? What happened to the gains, if any, once the programme faded? Some evidence suggests the shift was modest at best. And in that silence after the fields, one sees a mirror of the Afghan conflict: high hopes, complex realities, unintended consequences. The opium economy did not simply vanish. It morphed. It adapted. It survived. The poppies persisted because the incentives remained — poverty, weak governance, conflict. In the end, the CIA’s mission was a curious blend of science and espionage, of farmer and agency, of seed and sabotage. It acknowledged that confronting the narcotics trade required more than targeting traffickers — it required changing the plants themselves, the economy of fields that stretched under the Afghan sun. Whether that change was sufficient or sustainable remains contested. In the valleys of Helmand, perhaps a few fields are still planted with those specially bred seeds. Perhaps they mix into the broader crop; perhaps not. The mission’s traces may be subtle, hidden in the soil. But the story is vivid: a moment when covert operations reached into the very seed of the problem. For those who study counter-narcotics, the programme offers a caution: clever solutions do not always overcome complex systems. And for the farmers, the heroin traffickers, the insurgents, the state, it reaffirmed a truth: the poppy is more than a crop. It is a stubborn ally of chaos, peace, poverty and power.
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Sources: The Washington Post Seattle Times CIA — declassified FOIA documents VICE Afghan Studies Center