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Troops leave Helmand to an uncertain future
By David Loyn Afghanistan correspondent, BBC News
Voters will elect a new national president and provincial councils
Afghan forces in Helmand in the south-west of the country are struggling to provide security for Saturday's elections.
During fighting in the last few months, the police lost 400 men - their worst losses in the winter since the conflict began.
Qudratullah Naqshbandi, the head of the Independent Election Commission, says it will not be possible to open polling stations in a third of the province.
Much of the countryside in the north of Helmand is now in the hands of the Taliban.
At the same time, the annual attempt to destroy the opium poppy crop is under way. Resin in the seed heads of the poppies is the raw material for opium.
Poppy farmers and police are united on one thing: without alternatives, farmers will not give up the crop
The counter-narcotics chief, Acting Colonel Mohammed Abdali, says that the money to buy fuel for the tractors and pay the workers who destroy the crop has not been paid by the central government.
There was a record harvest last year, the last year in which there was a substantial UK and US troop presence.
Colonel Abdali says that he will not be able to destroy more than a very small fraction of the more than 100,000 hectares thought to have been planted. Driving an armoured Humvee donated by the US, which has bullet marks on every window, he said that he had to fight the Taliban every day.
One of a new generation of police commanders with far better education and motivation than many of their predecessors, he knows eradication is a blunt instrument that will have no lasting effect without other policies as well.
"My request from the authorities is that poor farmers should be provided with alternatives, so their future can be guaranteed. Otherwise, when we eradicate their poppies, they are forced to join the Taliban, or commit crimes," he says.
As his tractors tear through the poppy fields, ripping up the thick green poppy plants, farmers plead with him to stop. One says: "Who do I complain to. Where do I go to rip my shirt" - a traditional sign of despair.
The farmers have borrowed to buy poppy seeds and fertiliser, and fear they will not be able to repay. They say they plant only a few poppies to feed their families. Nothing else pays as well. Failure to provide markets for alternative crops undermined much else that British troops did here........
By David Loyn Afghanistan correspondent, BBC News
Voters will elect a new national president and provincial councils
Afghan forces in Helmand in the south-west of the country are struggling to provide security for Saturday's elections.
During fighting in the last few months, the police lost 400 men - their worst losses in the winter since the conflict began.
Qudratullah Naqshbandi, the head of the Independent Election Commission, says it will not be possible to open polling stations in a third of the province.
Much of the countryside in the north of Helmand is now in the hands of the Taliban.
At the same time, the annual attempt to destroy the opium poppy crop is under way. Resin in the seed heads of the poppies is the raw material for opium.
Poppy farmers and police are united on one thing: without alternatives, farmers will not give up the crop
The counter-narcotics chief, Acting Colonel Mohammed Abdali, says that the money to buy fuel for the tractors and pay the workers who destroy the crop has not been paid by the central government.
There was a record harvest last year, the last year in which there was a substantial UK and US troop presence.
Colonel Abdali says that he will not be able to destroy more than a very small fraction of the more than 100,000 hectares thought to have been planted. Driving an armoured Humvee donated by the US, which has bullet marks on every window, he said that he had to fight the Taliban every day.
One of a new generation of police commanders with far better education and motivation than many of their predecessors, he knows eradication is a blunt instrument that will have no lasting effect without other policies as well.
"My request from the authorities is that poor farmers should be provided with alternatives, so their future can be guaranteed. Otherwise, when we eradicate their poppies, they are forced to join the Taliban, or commit crimes," he says.
As his tractors tear through the poppy fields, ripping up the thick green poppy plants, farmers plead with him to stop. One says: "Who do I complain to. Where do I go to rip my shirt" - a traditional sign of despair.
The farmers have borrowed to buy poppy seeds and fertiliser, and fear they will not be able to repay. They say they plant only a few poppies to feed their families. Nothing else pays as well. Failure to provide markets for alternative crops undermined much else that British troops did here........
