British forces stay away as Afghan opium war begins

The force to eradicate the poppy fields arrived at the capital of Helmand province from Kabul yesterday, and the programme will be under way in time, it is expected, for the weekend visit of President George Bush.

The policy is emotive and controversial. The poppy crop is the livelihood for many small farmers and their resentment is expect-ed to spark violence.

But Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai, a beneficiary of Western largesse, is under pressure from the US and Britain to end his country's opium production, the biggest in the world and the source of much of the West's drugs. Helmand, which produces 25 per cent of the crop, has been chosen as a show of his government's toughness during the US President's visit.

The prospect of the farmers taking up arms and being joined by a resurgent Taliban and their Islamist allies has led to an eradication operation more military than agricultural in nature.

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http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article348390.ece