The corrosive impact of life under a kleptocracy became all too clear when a close friend was extorted by three judges. Ajmal, a successful journalist and well-connected fixer, was ordered to pay the judges $4,000 or go to jail. The issue was an alleged theft at a guesthouse that his brother had managed a year earlier, before moving to Europe.

To top it off, one of the judges involved--a languid man with a poorly dyed beard and penchant for flashy suits--was toying with Ajmal under the guise of negotiating the bribe. The judge would insist that Ajmal come have tea at the office or join the judge's entourage to attend a wedding. Money wasn't enough--Ajmal had to grovel; he had to put on obsequious public displays of appreciation for the judge and his power.

I went along on one trip. The judge's office was devoid of books, files, papers, a computer or anything else that hinted of work. Instead it was lined with chairs in which sat a rotating series of social visitors. "My family is very well known. We are related to King Zahir Shah," says the judge with a leering smirk and a pause. Ajmal chimes in with praise for the elaborate lineage charts on display at the judge's home. "You will have to come visit. You will be my guests," says the judge.

The next time I see Ajmal he explodes into a pro-Taliban diatribe. "Fucking judges! Having long beards, big turbans, acting always very religious." His voice shakes with rage. "They are not even this much Muslim!" Ajmal grabs the tip of his little finger. "If the Taliban come back, I will pray for them! I don't care if I have to grow a beard, go to mosque all the time. I don't care. At least they are not thieves!"

This from a man who has made lots of money in the new Afghanistan, enjoys the occasional drink, rarely prays and was even jailed under the Taliban because he had a Leonardo DiCaprio-style haircut. The club-wielding Talib called it "Titanic hair" and shaved it all off.

In the countryside the Taliban capitalize on the resentments and humiliations of life under kleptocracy and occupation by not being corrupt and by simply killing officials who are. According to most credible reports--including one from a Western intelligence source--the Taliban are known to "always pay for food and gasoline--always." Government forces are more likely not to pay, in part because their troops and front-line officers are broke. If the corruption of Karzai's government is Afghanistan's new cancer, then the Taliban are increasingly seen as chemotherapy: a very unpleasant but perhaps necessary remedy.

Western officials assert that the Taliban fund themselves by taxing the drug trade. But with opium production accounting for at least half of Afghanistan's GDP, it could be said that even merchants selling plastic buckets to farmers at the local bazaar are "funded by the drug trade."

According to the United Nations, Afghanistan now supplies 92 percent of the world's heroin. Production dipped last year by 21 percent but has now bounced back, to an all-time high. Poppy cultivation directly employs an estimated 2.9 million Afghans, and the country earns about $3 billion annually from it--most of which is parked in foreign bank accounts and laundered through regional real estate schemes.

Karzai has said, "Either Afghanistan destroys opium or opium will destroy Afghanistan." And the UN has described poppy as creating "a state of emergency." But a visit to drug-growing regions indicates that the exact opposite is just as possible: Opium revenue acts as a stabilizing force by keeping poor farmers alive. Eradicate all poppy, and Afghanistan's 30 million people could plunge back into all-out civil war, with the country disintegrating into two or three parts: the Pashtun south becoming a de facto extension of heavily Pashtun northern Pakistan, and the more ethnically diverse north, around Mazar-e-Sharif, and west, around Herat, being pulled into the orbits of the more developed economies of Central Asia and Iran.

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