Afghan opium town suffers hard times after ban on drugs bazaar

[emad]

Independent
By Nick Meo in Jalalabad
29 January 2005


Until a few months ago Afghanistan's biggest opium bazaar was on the outskirts of a ramshackle village called Ghani Khel, on a lush plain near the Khyber Pass backed by the snow-covered Tora Bora mountains.

Trade in the grey-brown cakes took place in a row of rickety wooden huts behind the main street. Farmers flocked there with the precious harvest, hard and grey on the outside, gooey and black in the middle, and traders came from Pakistan, Iran or Turkey to find the best-quality source.

Now opium is banned, the farmers have been forced to plant wheat, and Ghani Khel is a boom town that has gone bust. Opium was the only reason for outsiders to ever come here.

The bazaar is a 15-minute bumpy drive from the main road, halfway between the eastern city of Jalalabad and the Pakistan border, in the middle of what were until recently Afghanistan's richest poppy fields. Every spring for the past three years a sea of beautiful white and purple blooms has covered Nangarhar province, even though growing it was technically illegal.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/story.jsp?story=605739

[hollowdweller]

1. They need to switch to hash and make Afghanistan the Holland of the mideas

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