Welcome back to the Great Game
Robert Fox
They were gathering in the poppy harvest when the British troops arrived a month ago in Helmand, the hottest, poorest and most drug-ridden province of southern Afghanistan.
The acreage of poppies is down this year, but in spite of the drought and the fighting, the yield has been good.
The total crop from the south of Afghanistanis expected to net just under $3bn, but that money will go to the warlords, the middlemen and traffickers; only tiny sums will reach the farmers.
The Taliban, with their cohorts of sharp-featured teenagers in black turbans fresh from the madrasas of the refugee communities straddling the Pakistan border, have been telling anyone who will listen in the opium villages along the Helmand river that the British have come to burn their crops and destroy their lives.
"Most of our problems come from across the border," declares the newly restored Afghan defence minister, General Abdul Raheem Wardak, a former mujahideen commander against the Russian occupation way back when. "That's where they get their good equipment, training and recruits."
The general doesn't mince his words. Some say he is likely to be the next US favourite to take over in Kabul, should the already stumbling Hamid Karzai fall in the next few months.
A British colonel who made much the same critique of the new strength of the Taliban coming from Pakistan got an official telling-off after the Guardian reported his words.
"The Taliban have been building a shadow authority here," says Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Tootal, commanding the Helmand taskforce. "There has been no security here since the Taliban regime fell four years ago, no police and no law at all."
(There is more.)
They were gathering in the poppy harvest when the British troops arrived a month ago in Helmand, the hottest, poorest and most drug-ridden province of southern Afghanistan.
The acreage of poppies is down this year, but in spite of the drought and the fighting, the yield has been good.
The total crop from the south of Afghanistanis expected to net just under $3bn, but that money will go to the warlords, the middlemen and traffickers; only tiny sums will reach the farmers.
The Taliban, with their cohorts of sharp-featured teenagers in black turbans fresh from the madrasas of the refugee communities straddling the Pakistan border, have been telling anyone who will listen in the opium villages along the Helmand river that the British have come to burn their crops and destroy their lives.
"Most of our problems come from across the border," declares the newly restored Afghan defence minister, General Abdul Raheem Wardak, a former mujahideen commander against the Russian occupation way back when. "That's where they get their good equipment, training and recruits."
The general doesn't mince his words. Some say he is likely to be the next US favourite to take over in Kabul, should the already stumbling Hamid Karzai fall in the next few months.
A British colonel who made much the same critique of the new strength of the Taliban coming from Pakistan got an official telling-off after the Guardian reported his words.
"The Taliban have been building a shadow authority here," says Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Tootal, commanding the Helmand taskforce. "There has been no security here since the Taliban regime fell four years ago, no police and no law at all."
(There is more.)
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