Daniele Mastrogiacomo, correspondent of the italian newspaper 'La Repubblica', has been 'arrested' by the Talibans. The word 'arrested' has been used by the taliban spokesperson Qari Yousef Ahamdi. Contacts with Mastrogiacomo had been lost sunday evening, after he had reached Kandahar from Kabul. With the italian reporter, two afghan interpreters and two afghan women have allegedly been taken by the Talibans. Mastrogiacomo has supposedly been kidnapped in the village of Agmal, Garmser district, north of Lashkar-gah, capital city of the southern province of Helmand. The Talibans, led in this region by Mullah Dadullah, held them because they were entering without authorization the poppy plantation region under their control. Mastrogiacomo and the two interpreters have presumedly been transferred to a local Taliban hideout in order to be questioned by Dadullah himself. They are accused of espionage for the British. All their equipment, including telephones, computers and cameras, have been seized.

This news were published this morning by the Bbc website, referring however to an english journalist called John Nichol and quoting instead the nearby district of Nad Ali. The names of the two afghans referred to by the english media, Ajmal and Syed Agha, seem to correspond - according to La Republica - to those of the interpreters. The area where the kidnapping took place, on the west bank of Helmand river, is a whole expanse of poppy fields, separated by irrigation canals embankments, dotted with villages where poor peasants live in clay houses, on whose roofs lie in ambush the taliban armed guardians, committed to keep policemen and nosey-parkers away. Right in this area, last spring PeaceReporter had reported on the opium trade. We publish an excerpt of that reportage.

For the people here opium is not the devil, it isn’t evil but represents the only method of survival. Whoever owns a plot of fertile land bigger than an orchard uses it to grow poppies. Nizab, poppy grower and father of a family. All you have to do is travel round the province of Helmand to understand the situation. All the fields, and we’re talking about all of them, have been planted with poppies, including the one owned by Nizab, a forty-year-old farmer, thin as a rake, who is busy using a sickle to cut away the weeds that infest the poppy seeds. “There are twenty of us in my family. With the money I get from selling opium I can just about manage to feed my children. Look at this”, he says, taking the broken rubber shoe off one of his children who’s playing nearby, “I haven’t even got enough money to dress them properly! If it wasn’t for opium we’d die of hunger because there’s nothing else. We definitely couldn’t survive with what they give at the market for corn or cotton, which is a tenth of what they pay for opium”. Another picture on one of the posters shows young Afghanis smoking opium. Afghanistan is now also becoming a consumer and not just a producer of opium. “I know that opium kills people”, Nizab continues, “and not just in you country but also here. It’s not my fault if there are people who have the money to buy drugs for themselves. I haven’t got any money and if I want to feed my children I’m forced to cultivate this stuff. If only I could do it by doing something else! If cotton and corn paid as much as opium, I’d change over straight away. If there was other work I could do for a living, I wouldn’t think twice. But there’s nothing else here except tariak, opium”, Nizab said pointing to his field and the others around him. “I’ve seen the posters in town and I’ve heard the rumour that the police and British soldiers are coming to destroy our fields. Let them come, we’ll be waiting for them! We’ll defend our fields even if it costs our lives because if they take our fields away from us we’ll die anyway, of hunger! If the Taliban use the money they get from opium to buy arms that’s okay by me because they’re the ones who defend our fields. Now it’d be better if you went before some guard shoots at you from the hill over there”.