We have a tradition in Islam that if you are starving you can eat the meat of animals that is forbidden at other times. It is the same with the opium poppies. We are compelled to grow them because we are poor.


Abdul Ahmed, 28, a farmer from Helmand, Afghanistan. 'Taleban drug that drove addict to kill', FROM CATHERINE PHILP IN QUETTA, www.thetimes.co.uk/ (Abdul came [to the clinic in Quetta] three weeks ago to overcome the addiction he developed at the age of ten when he sucked the juices from a poppy plant growing on his father’s farm. Mr Ahmed is also planning his return to Afghanistan, not to fight, but to plant his fields with opium poppies to replace the stunted wheat crops he had grown in their place.)