From the helicopter, you can see the empty fields of southern Afghanistan’s Helmand River valley. Now comes the question: When the fields are lush again in spring, will farmers be growing opium poppy or wheat?
“This year we want to reach a minimum reduction of at least 50 percent,” said Gulab Mangal, Governor of Helmand, Afghanistan’s main opium-growing province and the most violent front in the Afghan war. “There is a very strong link between opium growing and the Taliban — the drug dealers are helping Taliban by buying weapons and ammunition for them.”
Once known as the bread basket of Afghanistan, the lush green irrigated fields of Helmand are the world’s single largest source of opium. The US sent 10,000 Marines to the province this year, joining a similar-sized British force.
PHOTO: REUTERS
They simultaneously launched the two biggest military offensives of the eight-year-old war, aiming to drive out Taliban fighters from the opium lands.
Meanwhile, the Westerners and the Afghan government are trying to persuade farmers to switch to other crops.
“They send us help and their sons to sacrifice their lives and we send them opium. We should be grateful and use their resources better,” Mangal said of the Western aid.
The economics of the opium trade have helped efforts to fight it this year. Partly because of past failures to combat it, there is now a global glut of opium, which has sent its price falling.
The UN said a hectare planted with opium in Afghanistan produced just three times as much cash value as the same land planted with wheat this year, compared with 27 times as much value a few years ago. UK experts say any economic advantage of producing opium may have been eliminated altogether.
In what Western governments describe as a major success, farmers cultivated poppy on a third less land in Helmand this year than last year, the UN said.
Nevertheless, Helmand’s farmers achieved record yields where the drug was planted, still managing to produce more than half of the world’s illegal opium in the province. As part of an effort to reduce Taliban influence and funding, Mangal and his US and UK backers hope farmers will plant wheat instead. The UK has spent US$15 million to provide wheat seed to nearly 70,000 farmers last year and this year.
Most farmers have to make do with 24th-generation wheat seed available on the local market, which has poor yields and little pest resistance. The new scheme will provide farmers with first-generation seed at a fraction of the market rate, plus fertilizer and technical assistance.
Trucking the wheat out to eight of Helmand’s 13 districts is no mean feat. Several of the brightly painted trucks loaded high with seed sacks and escorted in convoys have been ambushed, hit by bombs, crashed on the tough roads or disappeared without trace. Some areas are still waiting for their wheat to arrive.
The British military call Mangal a “bullet-magnet” for the risks he takes when going out to hold meetings in rural districts. During a meeting with elders in Sangin in the north of the province, insurgents shelled the gathering for 90 minutes.
Sporting Prada sunglasses and a suit jacket over his flowing clothes, the governor wandered through the center of Nad Ali district west of the provincial capital Lashkar Gah.
Despite regular rocket attacks, the town has come to life in recent months, a sign of security improvements since July’s simultaneous US operation Strike of the Sword and British Operation Panther’s Claw to the north and south.
Last year the main shopping street — a few dusty strips — was empty. Now about 300 stalls ply their wares in the bazaar. Shoes dangle from wooden struts, outsize weighing scales stand waiting for produce, and spare parts and mobile phone credit sellers lazily drink green tea together on wheeled-wooden carts.
In a half-built police station, Mangal implored elders to give up opium as a way of ensuring violence does not return.
“Almost one-and-a-half years ago this village was under control of the Taliban,” he told hundreds of bearded men who sat barefoot on red rugs. “With the end of the opium, the corruption, the killing, the insurgency — everything will stop.”
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
OPTIMISTIC: A Philippine Air Force spokeswoman said the military believed the crew were safe and were hopeful that they and the jet would be recovered A Philippine Air Force FA-50 jet and its two-person crew are missing after flying in support of ground forces fighting communist rebels in the southern Mindanao region, a military official said yesterday. Philippine Air Force spokeswoman Colonel Consuelo Castillo said the jet was flying “over land” on the way to its target area when it went missing during a “tactical night operation in support of our ground troops.” While she declined to provide mission specifics, Philippine Army spokesman Colonel Louie Dema-ala confirmed that the missing FA-50 was part of a squadron sent “to provide air support” to troops fighting communist rebels in
PROBE: Last week, Romanian prosecutors launched a criminal investigation against presidential candidate Calin Georgescu accusing him of supporting fascist groups Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Romania’s capital on Saturday in the latest anti-government demonstration by far-right groups after a top court canceled a presidential election in the EU country last year. Protesters converged in front of the government building in Bucharest, waving Romania’s tricolor flags and chanting slogans such as “down with the government” and “thieves.” Many expressed support for Calin Georgescu, who emerged as the frontrunner in December’s canceled election, and demanded they be resumed from the second round. George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), which organized the protest,
ECONOMIC DISTORTION? The US commerce secretary’s remarks echoed Elon Musk’s arguments that spending by the government does not create value for the economy US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on Sunday said that government spending could be separated from GDP reports, in response to questions about whether the spending cuts pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency could possibly cause an economic downturn. “You know that governments historically have messed with GDP,” Lutnick said on Fox News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures. “They count government spending as part of GDP. So I’m going to separate those two and make it transparent.” Doing so could potentially complicate or distort a fundamental measure of the US economy’s health. Government spending is traditionally included in the GDP because
RSS