Word: opiumeators
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...cooking oil. It warned the farmers of Kajaki Olya, a village on the banks of the Helmand River in southern Afghanistan, not to accept any other gifts from the British troops struggling to bring order to this corner of the country's most problematic province. Ghulam Madin, an opium-poppy farmer, begs the soldiers to stop coming through his village. He doesn't want any more food or cash, even though his gaunt face and bare feet indicate that he needs both. "Last time you brought us shoes as gifts, and it made big problems for us. The Taliban came...
...foreign forces are already stretched thin in Helmand province, and other areas have taken priority. Without additional troops, he can't hope to gain the confidence and cooperation of villagers like Madin. Nor can he wean them off their only source of income: the poppy crop that supplies the opium trade. "I am sure it is like this in places all over Helmand," says Shervington. "There are other companies struggling as much as us. We all want to see success. But we don't have enough troops...
Inaccessible and untamed valleys throughout the province provide transit routes for drugs, weapons and insurgents across Afghanistan. The government is weak, and there's little rule of law--local police are seen as scarcely more than uniformed thieves. Opium traffickers have a firm grip on the agricultural production of the province, providing credit, seeds and fertilizer to farmers, who have no other recourse than to grow the raw material for heroin--which in turn finances the insurgency. Helmand is the biggest opium-producing region in the world. And it is home to a Pashtun population that has historically resisted centralized...
...lack of electricity throughout Afghanistan has been a source of constant frustration. Industries are forced to generate their own power, cutting into payrolls; this means they can't pay the kinds of salaries that could keep young men away from the Taliban or the opium trade. Without the Kajaki power station, southern Afghanistan cannot escape the quicksand of a drug-funded insurgency. "There are two or three things that can really change people's lives, and one of them is having electricity," says the U.N.'s Alexander. "Once work begins on a larger scale, it will show that this...
...most Chinese, victory in Beijing will not only prove their country's status as a potential superpower but also erase its historic humiliation by colonial powers. Stupefied by opium, cowed by Western firepower, China was dismissed at the outset of the 20th century as the "sick man of Asia." Indeed, the first article Chairman Mao ever published was on the importance of sporting success to the national psyche. "Our nation is wanting in strength," he fretted back in 1917. "If our bodies are not strong, how can we attain our goals and make ourselves respected?" Winning, Mao and his followers...