(May, 2008)

GARMSER, Afghanistan — The Marines of Bravo Company’s 1st Pla­toon sleep beside a grove of pop­pies. Troops in the 2nd Pla­toon play­fully swat at the heavy opium bulbs while walk­ing through the fields. Afghan labor­ers scrap­ing the plant’s gooey resin smile and wave.

Last week, the 24th Marine Expe­di­tionary Unit moved into south­ern Hel­mand province, the world’s largest opium poppy-growing region, and now find them­selves sur­rounded by green fields of the ille­gal plants that pro­duce the main ingre­di­ent of heroin.

The Tal­iban, whose fight­ers are exchang­ing daily fire with the Marines in Garmser, derives up to $100 mil­lion a year from the poppy har­vest by tax­ing farm­ers and charg­ing safe pas­sage fees — money that will buy weapons for use against U.S., NATO and Afghan troops.

Yet the Marines are not destroy­ing the plants. In fact, they are reas­sur­ing vil­lagers the pop­pies won’t be touched. Amer­i­can com­man­ders say the Marines would only alien­ate peo­ple and drive them to take up arms if they elim­i­nated the impov­er­ished Afghans’ only source of income.

Many Marines in the field are scratch­ing their heads over the sit­u­a­tion.

”It’s kind of weird. We’re com­ing over here to fight the Tal­iban. We see this. We know it’s bad. But at the same time we know it’s the only way locals can make money,” said 1st Lt. Adam Lynch, 27, of Barn­sta­ble, Mass.

The Marines’ bat­tal­ion com­man­der, Lt. Col. Anthony Hen­der­son, said in an inter­view Tues­day that the poppy crop ”will come and go” and that his troops can’t focus on it when Tal­iban fight­ers around Garmser are ”ter­ror­iz­ing the peo­ple.”

”I think by focus­ing on the Tal­iban, the pop­pies will go away,” said Hen­der­son, a 41-year-old from Wash­ing­ton, D.C. He said once the mil­i­tant fight­ers are forced out, the Afghan gov­ern­ment can move in and offer alter­na­tives.

An expert on Afghanistan’s drug trade, Bar­nett Rubin, com­plained that the Marines are being put in such a sit­u­a­tion by a ”one-dimensional” mil­i­tary pol­icy that fails to inte­grate polit­i­cal and eco­nomic con­sid­er­a­tions into long-range plan­ning.

”All we hear is, not enough troops, send more troops,” said Rubin, a pro­fes­sor at New York Uni­ver­sity. ”Then you send in troops with no capac­ity for assis­tance, no capac­ity for devel­op­ment, no capac­ity for aid, no capac­ity for gov­er­nance.”

Most of the 33,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan oper­ate in the east, where the poppy prob­lem is not as great. But the 2,400-strong 24th Marines, have taken the field in this south­ern grow­ing region dur­ing har­vest sea­son.

In the poppy fields 100 feet from the 2nd Platoon’s head­quar­ters, three Afghan broth­ers scraped opium resin over the week­end. The youngest, 23-year-old Sar­dar, said his fam­ily would earn lit­tle money from the har­vest.

”We receive money from the shop­keep­ers, then they will sell it,” said Sar­dar, who was afraid to give his last name. ”We don’t have enough money to buy flour for our fam­i­lies. The smug­glers make the money,” added Sar­dar, who worked along­side his 11-year-old son just 20 yards from a Marine guard post, its guns pointed across the field.

Afghanistan sup­plies some 93 per­cent of the world’s opium used to make heroin, and the Tal­iban mil­i­tants earn up to $100 mil­lion from the drug trade, the United Nations esti­mates. The export value of this har­vest was $4 bil­lion — more than a third of the country’s com­bined gross domes­tic prod­uct.

Though they aren’t erad­i­cat­ing pop­pies, the Marines pres­ence could still have a pos­i­tive effect. Hen­der­son said the drug sup­ply lines have been dis­rupted at a cru­cial point in the har­vest. And Marine com­man­ders are debat­ing stay­ing in Garmser longer than orig­i­nally planned.

Sec­ond Lt. Mark Green­lief, 24, a Mon­mouth, Ill., native who com­mands the 2nd Pla­toon, said he orig­i­nally wanted to make a heli­copter land­ing zone in Sardar’s field. ”But as you can see that would ruin their poppy field, and we didn’t want to ruin their liveli­hood.”

Sar­dar ”basi­cally said, ‘This is my liveli­hood, I have to do what I can to pro­tect that,”’ said Green­lief. ”I told him we’re not here to erad­i­cate.”

The Tal­iban told Garmser res­i­dents that the Marines were mov­ing in to erad­i­cate, hop­ing to encour­age the vil­lagers to rise up against the Amer­i­cans, said 2nd Lt. Bran­don Bar­rett, 25, of Mar­ion, Ind., com­man­der of the 1st Pla­toon.

In the next field over from Sardar’s, Khan Moham­mad, an Afghan born in Hel­mand province who lives in Pak­istan and came to work the fields, said he makes only $2 a day. He said the work is dan­ger­ous now that Tal­iban mil­i­tants are shoot­ing at the U.S. posi­tions.

”We’re stuck in the mid­dle,” he said. ”If we go over there those guys will fire at us. If we come here, we’re in dan­ger, too, but we have to work,” said the 54-year-old Moham­mad, who sup­ports a fam­ily of 10.

An even older laborer, his back bent by years of work, came over and told the small gath­er­ing of Afghans, Marines and jour­nal­ists that the labor­ers had to get back to work ”or the boss will get mad at us.”

Staff Sgt. Jeremy Stover, whose pla­toon is sleep­ing beside a poppy crop planted in the inte­rior court­yard of a mud-walled com­pound, said the Marines’ mis­sion is to get rid of the ”bad guys,” and ”the locals aren’t the bad guys.”

”Poppy fields in Afghanistan are the corn­fields of Ohio,” said Stover, 28, of Mar­ion, Ohio. ”When we got here they were ask­ing us if it’s OK to har­vest poppy and we said, ‘Yeah, just don’t use an AK-47.”’

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