provisions for a new constitution and national elections. As part of that agreement, the United Kingdom (UK) was designated the lead country in addressing counter-narcotics issues in Afghanistan. Afghanistan subsequently implemented its new constitution and held national elections. On December 7, 2004, Hamid Karzai was formally sworn in as president of a democratic Afghanistan." Approximately 40,000 foreign troops help manage security in Afghanistan, principally of 32,000 regular soldiers from 37 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces: the International Security Assistance Force. 8,000 US and other special operations forces make up the balance. To manage this turmoil, over 40,000 foreign troops still occupy Afghanistan. There is significant resistance, both from the ideological/theocratic Taliban, especially in southern Afghanistan, and also independent local warlords and drug organizations. Antonio Maria Costa, Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), described the situation this way: "There is no rule of law in most of the southern parts of Afghanistan—the bullets rule." It is helpful to be aware of certain areas of Afghanistan, which play a role in the drug traffic. "Southern region" of Helmand and Kandahar provinces, on the border with Pakistan, which are the highest-volume areas for drug transactions. There is a traditional route from Helmand, through Pakistan, to Iran Herat, in Herat Province, the Northern Alliance stronghold, which borders Iran Faizabad, in Badakhshan province, which has borders with Tajikistan, Pakistan, and China. The Afghan economy and opium The 2004 United Nations Development Programme ranked Afghanistan number 173 of 177 countries, using a human development index, with Afghanistan near or at the bottom of virtually every development indicator including nutrition, infant mortality, life expectancy, and literacy. Several factors encourage opium production, the greatest being economic: the high rate of return on investment from opium poppy cultivation has driven an agricultural shift in Afghanistan from growing traditional crops to growing opium poppy. Much of the funds involved do not go through traditional banks, but rather the hawala system, which makes tracking by the CIA much more difficult, although not impossible. See the role of hawala and Afghan drugs, and also the FININT section of CIA transnational anti-terrorism activities. It must be emphasized that opium cultivation, on this scale, is not traditional. Despite the fact that only 12 percent of its land is arable, agriculture is a way of life for 70 percent of Afghans and is the country's primary source of