The United States said it plans to reward Afghan provinces that combat the opium trade with more development aid in a new anti-drug strategy but analysts doubted it will make much difference anytime soon. U.S. officials unveiled the plan as part of a new carrot-and-stick approach of giving greater financial incentives to provincial governors to fight the opium trade while stepping up efforts to eradicate poppy crops and stem the flow of drugs. They said they plan to spend $25 million to $50 million to reward provinces that make significant progress against drugs, up from about $21 million budgeted in the current fiscal year and $6 million the previous year. They also plan to better coordinate counter-narcotics and counter-insurgency work in Afghanistan, which is the source of about 90 percent of the world's opium and is grappling with a revived Taliban insurgency. "We want to make sure there are greater rewards for success and greater consequences for failure," Ambassador Thomas Schweich, the acting U.S. assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement, told reporters.
