In Poppy War, Taliban Aim to Protect a Cash Crop
By TAIMOOR SHAH and ALISSA J. RUBIN
NYT
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — So focused are the Taliban on securing this year’s opium poppy crop — and the support of the farmers tending it — that in the early days of their spring offensive in the south, they are targeting not only the officials trying to eradicate the plants, but also the tractors they use.
This year, the poppy fields that are so beautiful right now, carpeted with lithe red blossoms, are also sown with land mines — the product of the increased cooperation between poppy farmers and the militants they see as protectors of their economic interests, government officials say.
“This year there is more poppy cultivation in Helmand, especially in places where people have confiscated the government lands and in places that were desert,” said Daoud Ahmadi, the spokesman for the governor in Helmand Province. “The reason is that the Taliban promised and persuaded farmers to grow poppy and told them they would protect them.”
One suicide attack this week in Helmand Province, the poppy-growing capital not just of Afghanistan but of the world, was indicative of the far larger fight being taken up to control the crop across the southern opium belt, say government officials and the people who live there.
(More here.)
NYT
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — So focused are the Taliban on securing this year’s opium poppy crop — and the support of the farmers tending it — that in the early days of their spring offensive in the south, they are targeting not only the officials trying to eradicate the plants, but also the tractors they use.
This year, the poppy fields that are so beautiful right now, carpeted with lithe red blossoms, are also sown with land mines — the product of the increased cooperation between poppy farmers and the militants they see as protectors of their economic interests, government officials say.
“This year there is more poppy cultivation in Helmand, especially in places where people have confiscated the government lands and in places that were desert,” said Daoud Ahmadi, the spokesman for the governor in Helmand Province. “The reason is that the Taliban promised and persuaded farmers to grow poppy and told them they would protect them.”
One suicide attack this week in Helmand Province, the poppy-growing capital not just of Afghanistan but of the world, was indicative of the far larger fight being taken up to control the crop across the southern opium belt, say government officials and the people who live there.
(More here.)
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