Alternatives to poppy-farming and gun-slinging

I finally get to ask my question of the man who says he knows every statistic in a notoriously data-less country. ‘OK, mister-chief-statistics-officer-for-the-province,’ I say in my best Pashtu, with a little help from my ever-smiling interpreter. ‘Do you know how many businesses there are in Helmand?’ He gives a multi-syllabic answer. I wait keenly for the translation. ‘Yes. None.’

It’s not the best news for Afghanistan’s most conservative and dangerous province. But it might help form part of the answer to why it’s proving so tough to dislodge the Taleban. There’s little other than poppy-growing and gun-slinging in the way of ‘alternative livelihoods’ — the phrase favoured by aid agencies when they mean jobs — in the province that this year produced 54 per cent of the world’s opium supply and has so far killed 95 British troops.

Lashkar Gah, Helmand’s capital, is a riverside town whose name means ‘army barracks’, and is appropriately home to the British brigade headquarters, banked by sand-filled blast walls the same colour as the dust that fills the city.