I held the pod that had oozed the dark opium paste, which had since been scraped and packed away. The special tool with the multiple razor-sharp blades had left the unique diagonal parallel line cut marks. As I turned the pod, I saw four more areas where the same diagonal cut had been made. Stewart, our PRT agricultural advisor, took the pod from me and told me it had been a good harvest of opium this year. While we poured millions of dollars into the region, Uruzgan had become a center of the worldwide illicit opium trade. It is the foundation of their economy. Everything and everyone is...