CAMP LEATHERNECK, Afghanistan – U.S. Marines are mounting an intensive effort to disrupt the opium harvest in the former Taliban enclave of Marja by confiscating tools from migrant workers, compensating poppy farmers who plow under their fields and collaborating with Drug Enforcement Administration personnel to raid collection sites.

The steps amount to one of the most novel U.S. attempts to crack down on a key part of Afghanistan’s drug trade while seeking to minimize the impact on individual farmers, many of them poor sharecroppers who face economic peril if they cannot harvest or sell their crops.

The plan to pay farmers, who will receive $120 for each acre of tilled fields, prompted a tense debate among Marines officials and civilian reconstruction personnel, some of whom argued that it provides preferential treatment to those in Marja who planted an illegal crop.

But the Marines’ program eventually won the approval of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. In a March 30 cable to the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, she called the effort “the best decision in the face of an array of less-than-perfect options.”

The Obama administration ended a program to eradicate poppy fields, saying it would drive farmers into the hands of the insurgency. Instead, the military and DEA operations here have been directed toward catching traffickers and drug kingpins and toward interdicting shipments of opium and processed heroin.

“When we went into Marja, we didn’t declare war on the poppy farmer,” said Brig. Gen. Lawrence Nicholson, commander of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade.

But the Marines were left with a dilemma: The poppy crop they think is providing significant income to the Taliban again began to increase after a significant drop last year.

Marja, a 155-square-mile area in Helmand province, remains home to the country’s largest concentration of poppy fields. Leaving them alone did not make sense to the Marines.

Even if the Marines had done nothing, the farmers would probably have faced serious difficulties. In the past, an estimated 60,000 migrant workers descended upon Marja to help with the harvest, but many might not come this year because more than 3,000 U.S. and Afghan forces are in the area. Also, the opium bazaars, where farmers sell their crops, have been shuttered.