Afghan power always stems from the poppy fields
In his 2015 documentary Bitter Lake, the filmmaker Adam Curtis observes that Afghanistan’s opium poppies grow in a “wonderland of vegetation and power”. Amid the conspiratorial hyperbole that characterises much of his work, it is a striking phrase — but also a perceptive one. The poppy is integral to modern Afghanistan because of its relationship to both vegetation (and the communities it sustains) and the exercise of raw power: two of the main forces which drive Afghan politics.
Understand this imperishable fact and it becomes clear how the country fell so quickly to the Taliban over recent weeks.
