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By Root 544 0

the Taliban regime had briefly banned farmers from growing poppies—largely to win international recognition, rather than for religious reasons. But in the years since the Taliban fled, poppies had returned to much of Helmand, because even though the government had banned the plant, it had not enforced that ban, and many influential Afghans here profited from the trade. Afghanistan now produced more heroin and opium than anywhere else in the world, and Helmand was the epicenter. Consequently, Helmand was one of the prettiest provinces in Afghanistan. During the spring, fields were splashes of brilliant red, orange, and purple.

Neither NATO nor the United States seemed quite sure how to tackle the drug trade. Allow the opium and heroin to flow, and watch the region sink further into lawlessness. Crack down on the opium farmers, and risk driving them into the arms of the Taliban, now protecting and encouraging the trade.

Until now, few of the international forces had spent much time in Helmand—there were simply not enough troops in the country to adequately cover the south. The major exception was the U.S.-led antiterrorist squad, mostly composed of U.S. special operations forces—the men with beards from elite parts of the military whom we were never supposed to refer to nor talk to while on embeds—and the men with beards from government agencies referred to as “other government agencies,” a term that typically included the CIA and other spook-like groups. These men had been operating in Helmand since the beginning of the war, hunting Al-Qaeda and other top terrorists, or so we were told.

As part of Operation Mountain Thrust, the regular U.S. Army was now moving into Helmand to try to secure key parts before officially handing over the province to the British. The army had just opened up new outposts, the major one about three miles from a town called Musa Qala, a stronghold of insurgents, poppy farmers, and drug traffickers.

I had managed to get an embed in Musa Qala, despite what happened with Crowley the summer before. Somehow I had avoided any blacklist. And supposedly I was lucky. Many journalists considered this to be the best embed possible. But I wasn’t thrilled. It sounded scary, much scarier than Paktika.

In late June, after days of waiting on the sweltering Kandahar tarmac, I boarded a Chinook helicopter bound for Helmand. I buckled up, along with several soldiers and a new U.S. military translator, an Afghan American who had grown up on the East Coast. He looked uncomfortable in his fatigues, like he was afraid he might wrinkle them.

“What will you be doing?” I asked the man, who had the highest clearance possible because he was an American citizen.

“Working with the special forces, I guess.” He slumped in his seat a bit at the idea.

“Wow.” I looked at him closer. He didn’t look Pashtun. “Are you Pashtun?”

“Uzbek.”

“And you grew up in the U.S.?”

He nodded.

“You speak Pashto?”

He shrugged. “Yeah. Enough to get by.”

This was not encouraging. His Pashto could have been perfect, but the Afghans in Helmand would not trust an Uzbek or his translation. They would see his very existence as an insult to Pashtuns and an indication of how little the Americans understood. Uzbeks were from the north, known for oppressing the Pashtun minority there. This translator would also be unaware of all the tribal rivalries, of the granular ins and outs that made up every community in Afghanistan, each a universe of petty historic squabbles and alliances that mattered. Besides, speaking enough Pashto to get by was by no means enough Pashto. This was not the first time, nor would it be the last, that I met an Afghan translator who had been dropped into the wrong area.

The helicopter drowned out any hope of more conversation. Our pair of Chinooks took off, flying low over rolling hills. Every time the Chinooks flew the two-hour distance between Kandahar and Helmand, they took a different route over different hills, to avoid possible insurgents. The copilot handed me a headset so I could listen to the banter up front.

“Look.