The news in Afghanistan, particularly so far as the British troops fighting so bravely in Helmand province are concerned, is increasingly grim. Five years after 9/11, the Taliban are back. Johan Hari gives one major reason why:

Over the past five years, with British and American military support, a sinister corporation called DynCorps has been going to the fields of the poorest farmers in Afghanistan and systematically destroying them. This is because they are growing opium poppies, used to make heroin that is freely bought on the streets of the West. Emmanuel Reinert, the Executive Director of the Senlis Council, explains, “The Taliban revival is directly, intimately related to the crop eradication programme. It could not have happened if the US was not aggressively destroying crops. It is the single biggest reason Afghans turned against the foreigners…If you look at where the Americans have carried out the forced eradication programmes, it’s where people cannot feed their families. That’s where the Taliban is opportunistically gaining support.”

Quite why Dyncorps should be described as “sinister”, I don’t know (I suspect hyperbole at play), but the sad thing about what has happened, apart from the obvious, is how predictable it was. There have been warnings and warnings and warnings, but the drug warriors were allowed to get their way. Read the whole thing, and be appalled.