Using NewsHour Extra Feature Stories

Overview: NewsHour Extra features stories can help students identify and interpret key issues in current events. This activity anticipates one class period, but the follow-up essay might be assigned as homework, or in another period.

Warm Up: Use initiating questions to introduce the topic and find out how much your students know.

Main Activity: Have students read NewsHour Extra's feature story and answer the questions on the reading comprehension handout.

Discussion: Use discussion questions to encourage students to think about how the issues outlined in the story affect their lives and express and debate different opinions.

Follow-up: Students can write an 500-word editorial on the topic expressing their views and send it to NewsHour Extra [extra@newshour.org] for possible publication.

Evaluation: Students are graded on their answers to reading comprehension questions and/or their editorial.

Story: Fighting Terrorism in Afghanistan Means Combating Drug Trade, 05/23/07
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/jan-june07/afghanistan_5-23.html

Initiating Questions:

1. Where is Afghanistan on a map?

2. What do you know about the country and U.S. efforts there?

Reading Comprehension Questions: (click here for printout)

1. What is opium and where does it come from?

Afghanistan is the largest opium producing country in the world. Opium and other illegal drugs such as heroin come from a type of poppy plant that thrives in the arid country.

2. Describe the scope of Afghanistan's poppy crop now? How does this compare to past crops?

This year's illegal poppy crop in Afghanistan is bigger than ever, and experts anticipate it will yield up to 20 percent more than last year's record crop that produced 6,100 tons of opium on poppy fields that made up 407,000 acres of land, according to the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crimes.

The country provides more than 90 percent of the world's heroin. This is a huge increase from 1985 when Afghanistan provided 31 percent of global opium production or 12 percent of the global supply in 2001 after the Taliban banned production a year earlier.

3. How big is the Afghan drug trade? Who is getting most of the profits from the illegal drug trade?

According to American and other officials, the trade was estimated at $3.1 billion last year with the bulk of the profits going to Taliban warlords and other militants.

4. According to the article, what is one reason that international troops are not directly involved in poppy eradication efforts?

"Our line is that we have nothing to do with poppy eradication," Canadian commander Maj. Steve Graham told the Canadian Press. "But even though we want nothing to do with it and we stay away from it, it can't help but have an impact on us."

According to Graham, local poppy farmers provide key intelligence to troops about the Taliban or the location of bombs. But they are less likely to provide information if troops are involved in eradication efforts.

"Anything that damages that relationship is detrimental to what we're doing, and there's no doubt that poppy eradication damages that relationship," Graham said.

5. What are some of the ways that American-backed projects are working to eliminate Afghanistan's illegal drug trade?

American-backed projects to rid the country of illegal poppy crops include bringing in experts from Colombia, where there also is a wide-spread drug eradication program; helping create a judicial system to prosecute those guilty of drug crimes; and providing American contractors to act as security for laborers who are helping destroy poppy fields.

6. Why are alternative sources of income important in fighting the Afghan illegal drug trade?

Others believe that the United States and international community need to fund more projects that help create alternative sources of income. As it is now, the poppy trade simply pays more.

Farmers can earn three times as much growing poppies than growing wheat.

"I can feed my family very well by poppy cultivation, not by cultivating wheat or other vegetables -- and several other families are being fed while working in our field during harvesting season," a farmer who called himself Abdullah told the Canadian Press.

7. What role does Helmand Province play in the Afghan drug trade?

Most of the poppy cultivation is happening in the Taliban-strong south of the country; Helmand Province, for example, is expected to produce more than 50 percent of Afghanistan's poppy crop this year.

This growth brings in people from all over the country and even Pakistan to work in the fields.

Discussion Activity (more research might be needed):

1. What are the biggest challenges facing those who want to eradicate poppy cultivation in Afghanistan? What might be the consequences if eradication efforts fail?

2. Should international troops be directly involved in poppy eradication efforts? Why or why not?

3. According to the article, Colombians are helping teach Afghans about drug eradication efforts. How are the efforts in each country similar or different?

Write a 300-500 word essay on any of these topics providing clear examples. Send your completed editorial to NewsHour Extra (extra@newshour.org). Exceptional essays might be published on our Web site.