Allies Feel Strain of Afghan War

British officials hope that new deployments and stepped-up Afghan security training by the Marines will address one of Helmand's biggest problems -- the expansion of the opium crop. Opium provides income for the Taliban and is a major source of corruption within the Afghan police and government, yet the allies are divided on how to stop its production.

U.S. officials in Afghanistan, led by Ambassador William B. Wood, have insisted that the current strategy of manually destroying opium fields is ineffective and have pressed to begin aerial spraying of herbicide. Wood is a former ambassador to Colombia, where the United States funds and operates the world's largest aerial effort to eradicate coca.

The British, in charge of NATO's anti-narcotics program in Afghanistan, strongly oppose spraying, as does Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who last month formally ruled it out over U.S. objections. But the government's preferred method of manual eradication -- sending Afghan troops and police to pull poppy plants out of the ground -- has faltered because of poor security.

More important, programs to provide rural Afghans with alternative income sources remain underfunded and poorly coordinated. Each of NATO's regional Afghan commands operates its own provincial reconstruction teams, and scores of nongovernmental organizations work in the country. But with few exceptions -- such as Khost province under U.S. command in the east, where military and reconstruction resources are meshed -- they share no overriding strategy or operational rules.

The United States has pressed U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to appoint a high-level representative to coordinate non-military activities in Afghanistan. Karzai has resisted, and Ban is said to be worried about taking responsibility for what he sees as a worsening situation.

Staff writers Thomas E. Ricks and Colum Lynch contributed to this report.