Afghanistan: Lashkar Gah - Home of the Warriors Part I
by Leonard H. Le Blanc III
From 2007 to 2008 an American served as an adviser to an Afghan-led counter-narcotics advisory team in the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah, Helmand Province. This was, and still is, the scene of half the world's opium poppy production and ground center zero of a raging Taliban-fueled insurgency. It is a microcosm of why U.S. efforts failed in Afghanistan - the damage was all self-inflicted.