Warning tracers fired from the British-held hills above the Helmand River streak toward a village where Taliban fighters are digging a trench
The Taliban took the school-books away. It also took the flour and cooking oil. It warned the farmers of Kajaki Olya, a village on the banks of the Helmand River in southern Afghanistan, not to accept any other gifts from the British troops struggling to bring order to this corner of the country's most problematic province. Ghulam Madin, an opium-poppy farmer, begs the soldiers to stop coming through his village. He doesn't want any more food or cash, even though his gaunt face and bare feet indicate that he needs both. "Last time you brought us shoes as gifts, and it...
