The sky is clear and the sun is beaming down. The greeny blue rivers on one side and across the water as far out as you can see are miles and miles of poppy fields. Its beautiful but deadly. This time of year the harvest of opium is at full swing and farmers head out to the fields. One of the local farmers says there are no jobs and that this is their only option, they can’t afford to feed their families with corn or wheat. They want the government to create jobs for people in Helmand then they can exterminate poppies.
The farmer also describes how the opium is taken out. After the poppy loses its leaves, the bulb on the inside is slashed five times over several weeks. By the fifth slash the bulb bleeds oozing brown gunk, which is scraped off and put into containers. That is the opium. It is taken into nearby towns and sold upon a chain then smuggled over boarders. The farmers get paid £5 a day but they scrape off about £100 worth of opium at that time.
I think instead of spending all our money losing so many lives in Iraq we should be helping countries like Afghanistan. By helping them, we are also helping ourselves because we’d be getting these deadly drugs off the streets. My theory is if we work together with Britain in helping Afghans by providing some jobs, we’d be one step closer to a better world.

Britain doesn't fully support everything we're doing in Iraq.  And we are also trying to help Afghanistan, but we haven't seen many results.  What do  you think would be a way to help them??  That's the problem with this war, we went in without a plan and now we're making the same mistakes over and over. 

I think if we could provide jobs in afghanistan it would help alot. Like if big corporate companies like AT&T expanded and was used in Afghanistan, there would be hundreds more job positions available for them and we'd also be making money. Maybe also factories over there, or we could pay for more fast food restaurants. All those things are things we have here in America and countries like that dont. If we provide them with just a few things they could have better jobs and wont have to result to opium fields.

carrie said: I think if we could provide jobs in afghanistan it would help alot. Like if big corporate companies like AT&T expanded and was used in Afghanistan, there would be hundreds more job positions available for them and we'd also be making money. Maybe also factories over there, or we could pay for more fast food restaurants. All those things are things we have here in America and countries like that dont. If we provide them with just a few things they could have better jobs and wont have to result to opium fields.

There are VARIOUS ways in which we can provide them with jobs. Were a very grown nation with thousands of oppurtunities, I think it would be wise to be able to share those oppurtunities with another country and open up many doors for them, providing them with better lives and estranging them from the opium fields will also provide us with better lives. It also brings out a good image of America.

punjaboy said:

There are VARIOUS ways in which we can provide them with jobs. Were a very grown nation with thousands of oppurtunities, I think it would be wise to be able to share those oppurtunities with another country and open up many doors for them, providing them with better lives and estranging them from the opium fields will also provide us with better lives. It also brings out a good image of America.

Last time we tried to help a country out look where it led us!

Cameraman32 said:

punjaboy said:

There are VARIOUS ways in which we can provide them with jobs. Were a very grown nation with thousands of oppurtunities, I think it would be wise to be able to share those oppurtunities with another country and open up many doors for them, providing them with better lives and estranging them from the opium fields will also provide us with better lives. It also brings out a good image of America.

Last time we tried to help a country out look where it led us!

Well the last time we tried to help a country we also pretty much invaded with armed soldiers and bossed them around. I'm sure countries like afghanistan wouldn't object to us just providing them more jobs and therefore also giving them better lives than just being opium growers who dont even make a dollar a day.

I think if we could provide a better education in afghanistan more people there could become more educated and they can start providing better jobs for themselves and their whole community. Doing that will also stop some opium growers because they could get better jobs!