Opium cultivation in Afghanistan is one of the greatest challenges facing international intervention there as it provides the Taliban with a significant part of their funds for fostering the insurgency. In addition, poppy cultivation gives them a chance to establish mutually supportive social relations between insurgents and local population, thus weakening the state-building process. Efforts to combat the opium traffic, fight back the Taliban and bring stability to the country can hardly count on straightforward solutions. So far, eradication programmes and attempts to promote alternative crops have yielded no significant results, due partly to problems associated with the nature of opium production and partly to a low level of coordination together with the lack of a shared comprehensive strategy in the interventions themselves.