Afghan opium blight fuels anti-government suspicions

With livelihoods threatened by a mysterious blight on opium crops, many farmers in southern Afghanistan suspect policies of the U.S.-backed government of President Hamid Karzai may be behind the disease. With anti-U.S. feelings pervading Helmand and Kandahar provinces, some of the worst hit by insurgent violence, the blight that may cut opium output by half has played into deeply-held suspicions of the government and foreign troops. Few farmers appear to believe nature was the cause. Some farmers blame a new fertilizer they were forced to obtain after the government banned ammonium nitrate, which can also be used by insurgents to make bombs. "I have had not only my poppy affected, but wheat farms too and I suspect it is due to a type of fertilizer that is imported from Pakistan," said Janan, a farmer near Helmand's provincial capital of Lashkar Gah. "People have had their other type of crops suffer too as a result."