Where Taliban Rules Again
The fundamentalist fighters have regrouped to spread fear in one south Afghan province mired in poverty and the drug trade.
By Paul Watson
LA Times Staff Writer
June 24, 2006
LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan — In the sun-blasted badlands of Helmand province, the Taliban insurgency has grown so strong that frightened Afghan police turn to sympathetic drug lords' militias for protection.
When police escorted civilians into the desert village of Changer, half an hour's drive from Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital, the convoy of SUVs stopped at an abandoned Soviet-era military base that is now a drug lord's outpost.
A few police officers armed with old Kalashnikovs fanned out to guard the perimeter, while an edgy officer roused the militia fighters resting in the shade of a tree. He explained his concerns, asked for backup, and six young men armed with old AK-47 assault rifles and a battered grenade launcher joined the entourage in a rusting Toyota Corolla.
There were no foreign troops for miles around. Villagers said the Taliban controlled the area, and most of the province outside Lashkar Gah.
More than four years after U.S.-led forces helped push the fundamentalist Taliban regime out of power, the Islamic militia's fighters have regrouped and staked out a base of operations in Helmand, where the main cash crop is opium poppies for the heroin trade, and where few foreigners dare venture beyond the provincial capital.
A tangled web composed of drug lords, insurgents and the many inhabitants living in poverty has made Helmand the Afghan war's key battleground.
(There is more.)
By Paul Watson
LA Times Staff Writer
June 24, 2006
LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan — In the sun-blasted badlands of Helmand province, the Taliban insurgency has grown so strong that frightened Afghan police turn to sympathetic drug lords' militias for protection.
When police escorted civilians into the desert village of Changer, half an hour's drive from Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital, the convoy of SUVs stopped at an abandoned Soviet-era military base that is now a drug lord's outpost.
A few police officers armed with old Kalashnikovs fanned out to guard the perimeter, while an edgy officer roused the militia fighters resting in the shade of a tree. He explained his concerns, asked for backup, and six young men armed with old AK-47 assault rifles and a battered grenade launcher joined the entourage in a rusting Toyota Corolla.
There were no foreign troops for miles around. Villagers said the Taliban controlled the area, and most of the province outside Lashkar Gah.
More than four years after U.S.-led forces helped push the fundamentalist Taliban regime out of power, the Islamic militia's fighters have regrouped and staked out a base of operations in Helmand, where the main cash crop is opium poppies for the heroin trade, and where few foreigners dare venture beyond the provincial capital.
A tangled web composed of drug lords, insurgents and the many inhabitants living in poverty has made Helmand the Afghan war's key battleground.
(There is more.)
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