SIDEBAR. Video: Michael Hastings on Our 'Insane' Afghanistan Strategy »

Video: Michael Hastings on Our 'Insane' Afghanistan Strategy»

Indeed, during my time there, I get the impression that Helmand is not so much a province with an opium problem as it is an opium problem with a province. "This year, they wanted 10,000 hectares eradicated in Helmand," says Lt. Col. Mohammad Abdali, head of the province's counternarcotics police. "Do you know how many we eradicated? Six-hundred ninety-seven. It's a joke."

On my last day in Helmand, I decide to pay a visit to the dasht, the vast desert areas that border the province's fertile zones and extend out into Pakistan and Iran. If you fly over these areas, you'll see enormous swaths of land that, once barren, are patched with green fields of poppy. They are now largely controlled and taxed by the Taliban, who, with the Marines gone, are getting increasingly bold in their confrontations with the Afghan army.

Accompanied by the police, we drive out from the town of Gereshk, until we stop amid the poppy fields and compounds that have sprung up in the past few years. We can see the faint smudge of mountains to the north, the start of a band of rugged terrain that goes up into remote districts that the Taliban have governed for the past decade. If the Afghan government starts to lose its grip, Helmand will be one of the first places to fall. "This is the Taliban's area, they can plant as much as they want," says a young, sandy-haired lieutenant named Lalai, waving into the distance.

An aged farmer comes out of the nearest compound, walking hand in hand with a small boy, as if the presence of a child might placate the armed strangers who have come to his field. He has a lean face and his skin has been darkened by the sun, in contrast with his snow-white beard. It takes me a minute to notice that his right eye socket is empty.

Why has he come to farm in the desert? They were landless and destitute before, he says. He borrowed a couple thousand dollars from a local notable, the gas-station owner down the road, in order to afford fuel and fertilizer. But he says he'll be lucky to break even and repay the loan. There is an unspoken plea in his voice, but we haven't come to destroy his crop. "I probably won't plant poppy next year," the old man says, glancing anxiously from face to face. "I have definitely learned my lesson."

Between the impoverished farmer on one end and the desperate junkie on the other lies a tangled chain of criminals, politicians and drug warriors – the product of a world where drugs are illegal and addicts are plentiful. And with all the corruption and greed that have created the Afghan narco state, it's hard to imagine the country any other way.

From The Archives Issue 1224: December 18, 2014

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-spoils-of-war-afghanistan-s-multibillion-dollar-heroin-trade/91

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