Helmand Province, Afghanistan
I have adopted the Gordon Brown strategy and disappeared after a bad by-election result for Labour. My excuse is that I’m now in Afghanistan, finding out how things are in Helmand.
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Afghanistan is an amazing country whose people combine abject poverty with the ability to endure weather of -20c in winter to 50c in summer. Such hardiness makes for resolute fighters, but it seems the Taliban have failed to recruit for this season. The poppy harvest ended three weeks ago, and the fighting usually starts immediately as the hired $10 Taliban” swap ploughshares for Kalashnikovs. Not this time, though. As one solider told me “the problem with the $10 Taliban is they receive $0 training and get killed.”
It seems they have given up. Fighting was expected to start three weeks ago but hasn’t.
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