A Banner Year For Opium Growers In Afghanistan

IBDLive/BDLive: Afghan opium farmers celebrate bumper poppy harvest

NAQIL — Lashes swished and whirled through the air in a burst of celebration around a sea of opium poppies, as farmers in a southern Afghan village rejoiced over a bumper harvest with a traditional rope game.

Hundreds of farm labourers from across the Pashtun heartland, many of them Taliban, congregated last month in Naqil in Uruzgan province for the most lucrative time of the year — the poppy harvest.

After labouring all day in the torpid heat, extracting milky opium resin from swollen green pods, they broke into revelry around the bountiful farms.

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WNU Editor: A depressing read.