Flourishing Assistance Programs

Much of the US effort in Afghanistan centers on promoting ways to reduce the temptation, need or desire for Afghans to support or tolerate the insurgency.  Since the Taliban are among the foremost traffickers of opium in the world, we promote crop substitution programs, so that poor farmers will have options other than fields of poppy, which conjures up disturbing images of opium den smokers, flying monkeys and sky-writing witches.  So we try to encourage them to grow other things.  Here we see a photo of one such wildly successful cash crop program, in Kandahar Province.  Note the high-growing (these are over 5') crops which will bring satisfying income to those who manage this field.  There is also corn in the picture, though who knows where that came from.

nb for anyone unwilling to squint, admit s/he knows what the plant is or is genuinely unaware: the dark green plant is marijuana, which is of course also the leaf proudly displayed on Canada's national flag, or so my daughter once told me.