US Military Letting Afghanistan's Poppy Fields Be
Illegal crop represents 25 percent of country's GDP
Because of the poppies, the raw material for most of the world's heroin, the list of things 1st Lt. Christopher Gackstatter and his 2nd Platoon can't do in Sartok is far longer than the list of things they can.
Marching into the mud-walled village in this sun-baked district of southern Afghanistan on an April 24 intelligence-gathering mission, the boyish 25-year-old lieutenant and his roughly dozen riflemen and machine gunners are mindful of the many poppy-related prohibitions, developed over 12 painful years of war, that have been passed down to their Bravo Company by the higher unit, 3-41 Infantry, part of the Texas-based 1st Brigade of the 1st Armored Division.
They're not allowed to actually step foot in Sartok's many acres of poppy fields or damage the fields in any way.