Gretchen Peters is the author of Seeds of Terror, a ground-breaking book that traces the role the opium trade has played in three decades of conflict in Afghanistan. With the help of local reporters, she spent five years researching Seeds of Terror, combing through archives and surveying and interviewing Taliban fighters, smugglers, law enforcement officials, diplomats and intelligence officers.

An award-winning journalist, Peters covered Pakistan and Afghanistan for more than a decade, first for The Associated Press and later for ABC News. She has worked with other leading media outlets including The National Geographic Society, The Christian Science Monitor and The New Republic, and remains a regular commentator on NPR, CNN, BBC and numerous other radio and television programs. Peters authored a policy report on the opium trade for the U.S. Institute of Peace, and has written a paper about the Haqqani network with West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center. She has authored chapters in leading books on Afghanistan, and studied the links between crime and insurgency in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Peters has done presentations on her work for the Pentagon, the State Department, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Defense Intelligence Agency, Special Operations Command, the Navy Seals, more than a dozen think tanks and universities, and thousands of U.S. servicemen and women deploying to Afghanistan. Her editorials have been published in the New York Times and Foreign Policy, among other places. She lives in Washington DC.