Moscow's tough stance on narcotics stems from its own internal consumption levels, which have steadily reached epidemic proportions. According to 2008 records, up to 21 percent of the world's production of illicit opiates ended up in Russia, resulting in 30,000 deaths blamed on heroin-induced overdoses annually. 

"We are obviously very dissatisfied with the lack of attention from NATO and the United States to our complaints about this problem," Dmitry Rogozin, Russia's envoy to NATO, told reporters on March 12. Russia is not convinced the U.S. and NATO are doing enough to stifle the cultivation of opium poppy and the processing of opium into heroin. 

The complaints focus on the recent decline in the amount of poppy eradicated annually in Afghanistan. Between 2008 and 2009, only 10,000 hectares of opium poppy, or less than 4 percent of the land devoted to its cultivation, were eradicated, compared to 19,000 hectares eradicated in 2007 and 15,300 hectares in 2006. The massive decrease in eradication reflects NATO's new emphasis on attacking entrepreneurs who benefit from the drug trade higher up the value chain, while sparing the lower-level participants, such as farmers. 

Russian officials have slammed this approach and instead are demanding that NATO pursue an aerial eradication program designed to eliminate 25 percent of Afghanistan's poppy fields, a notion previously endorsed by the U.S. State Department but rejected by the Afghan government in 2007. The growing divide between Russian and NATO officials over Afghanistan's war on drugs once again brings a highly controversial counternarcotics issue to the table: to spray or not to spray? 

Over the past few decades, aerial spraying has been used against narco-landscapes across the world, including Mexico, Peru, Colombia and Burma -- always with disastrous or misleading results. In 2002, just four years after the high-profile aerial eradication campaigns linked to the Plan Colombia initiative were first introduced, the CIA concluded that Colombia's coca production had increased by 25 percent. A decade before, in 1988, considerable concern arose when the Reagan administration proposed an aerial eradication campaign that would spray the herbicide Spike (tebuthiuron) over the vast coca plantations of central Peru. Scientists noted the wide-ranging hazards Spike posed to the tropical environment, including the poisoning of waterways. Spike contained known carcinogens, which made it illegal to use in the United States at the time and ultimately prompted it to be taken off the international market by 1989. 

Similarly, the aerial spraying of Burma's opium crops in 1986 and 1987 with 2.4-D, known better by its commercial name, Weed-B-Gone, sickened thousands of villagers while poisoning waterways and rice paddies in the surrounding areas. The tons of herbicide dropped from U.S.-supplied Thrush Turbo spray planes had little meaningful impact on the cultivation of opium poppies in Burma. Despite the aerial spraying campaign, Burmese opium production rose from 350 tons in 1985 to 1280 tons in 1989, due to favorable weather conditions.

Russia's criticism of NATO's disappointing counternarcotics campaign in Afghanistan reflects a bitter irony of the tragedy that has unfolded in Afghanistan over the past 30 years. After all, it was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan that helped propel the country into the realm of industrial-scale narcotics production. Fierce resistance to the Soviet invasion, particularly in the rural areas, provoked harsh retaliations from Soviet forces, which intentionally targeted farms, orchards, harvests, irrigation systems and canals. Soviet scorched-earth operations resulted in the destruction of one-quarter to one-third of all irrigation systems -- such as the karez (underground aqueducts) as well as above-ground irrigation ditches and canals -- causing a severe disruption in water distribution. 

The lack of functioning irrigation systems led many farmers to seek out alternative high-value crops that consumed little water, like opium poppy. By 1987, analysts reported that the devastation caused to Afghanistan's agricultural infrastructure prevented most farmers from accessing agricultural inputs such as improved seed, fertilizer, and agricultural machinery for legal crops.

Not surprisingly, Afghan drug production soared to record levels under the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan between 1979 and 1989. Opium production nearly doubled between 1982 (300 tons) and 1983 (575 tons), and had almost tripled by 1987 (875 tons). By 1991, Afghanistan's role as a global opium producer was firmly established, with the production of 1,980 tons.

Recognizing the growing number of drug addicts among their citizens, the Soviets launched their own unsuccessful eradication campaign against illicit drugs -- Operation Poppy-86 -- in 1986, destroying 7,500 acres of poppy fields and 250,000 acres of marijuana fields, and arresting over 4,500 traffickers. The effort did little to curb the growing appetite for illegal drugs throughout the Eastern bloc. Last year, the U.N. estimated that drug dealers in Russia stood to make $13 billion from selling the 50 tons of illegal heroin available on the streets of Moscow alone.

Although materializing into a game of political tit-for-tat on the international stage, Russia and NATO's squabble over the counternarcotics campaign in Afghanistan is at least bringing much-needed attention to the scourge of the global heroin business. The knee-jerk reaction of offloading hundreds of tons of toxic chemicals over Afghanistan's agricultural sector has been wisely rejected by NATO and Afghan officials, sparing Afghanistan's ecosystem and rural livelihoods alike. However, without addressing more critical aspects of the drug trade, such as border-security measures and interdiction along the narcotics value chain -- including the illicit trade in the vital precursor chemicals needed to refine opium into heroin in the first place -- current counternarcotics efforts, both in Afghanistan and market destinations like Russia, will remain stymied. 

**Matthew DuPee is an Afghan specialist at the Naval Postgraduate School who focuses on the Southwest Asian narcotics industry. 

**Sara Kauffman earned an M.A. in Economics of International Development from the American University in Cairo, Egypt. 

Both are research associates with the Program of Culture and Conflict Studies at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA.