Word: deserter
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...villagers of Dalicharbolak how bad things are in the desert and they show you a boy named Saifudden. He is five, but looks two. He is too weak to walk, crawl or do anything but loll in his bearer's arms. He is bald, and his arms and legs are like sticks. Mohammed Akbar, 48, says Saifudden is an orphan. "Well, soon anyway." Akbar explains that Saifudden's father fled this ravaged village three months ago because of the drought and that his mother is dying fast. Ask about food and the villagers say that, born in the year...
...around Mazar it's almost impossible to find a field where hemp is not being grown, either openly or poorly hidden behind watermelons or knee-high cotton plants. "Everybody's farming chaars now," says former Taliban fighter Faizullah, 27, watering a verdant six-hectare oasis of hemp surrounded by desert. Cannabis used to be outlawed by the Taliban. "But now," says Faizullah, "it's a free...
...With dope growers exacerbating the shortage, centuries-old water holes and underground courses have evaporated. Crops downstream of hemp fields have withered and failed. With nothing to eat or drink and plagued by choking dust, entire villages and towns have emptied. "Whole parts of the country are turning into desert," says Brequeville. "And that's irreversible?there's no way back from the desert...
...Perhaps the starkest illustration of what cannabis is doing to Afghanistan is to be found at the village of Deh Naw, half an hour to the north of Mazar along Afghanistan's main north-south highway. Just out of sight of the hash hills upstream, the desert is swallowing Deh Naw whole. Five-meter-high sand dunes have crashed over the village's mud walls like desiccated tidal waves, burying houses, blocking streets and suffocating the vines and the mulberry, fig and pomegranate trees that once blossomed here. The 600 villagers survive by gathering desert thornbushes?used for lighting fires...
...years, but would love to design something for her birthplace. "I know they would like me to, but it is just too difficult to work there now. You can't even fly to Baghdad since the Gulf War. You have to go to Jordan then cross the desert in a taxi." Still, residents of London and Baghdad should not despair: Zaha Hadid is used to long hard routes...