The right hand images clearly show the opium harvesting and its proximity to our airfield defences. Before deploying to Helmand we were told that the summer 'fighting season' only began in earnest after the opium harvest was complete because the Taliban fighters were busy harvesting the opium. It was a truly surreal experience - protecting possible Taliban fighters from our ANDSF allies on my very first operational duty. I pointed out the opium harvesting to the guard commander when he visited the tower on April 22 and he nodded and said, "Yeah, I know". It appeared to be a situation that aggravated him as much as the sleeping guards, but was again beyond his control, something his senior commanders knew about but failed year-upon-year to do anything about. On December 17, 2013, whilst giving evidence to a British parliament inquiry into the Taliban's September 14/15, 2012 attack on Camp Bastion's airfield, British Lieutenant General David Capewell had the audacity to say:
"I think it was a minor tactical error to allow that poppy field to grow...
It was a minor contributing factor to the enemy's success."
Two weeks after his shameless statements and lies made before Britain's parliament, Lt Gen David Capewell became Sir David Capewell when Britain's old queen knighted him. On the other side of the Atlantic, in a nation that freed itself from such monarchic rule in 1776, there was far more honesty about and accountability for the Taliban's audacious airfield raid. When giving evidence to the US military's August 2013 inquiry into the airfield raid, US Marine Corp Major General Sturdevant said:
"We literally had poppy growing right up against the perimeter fence. That was another thing that Major General Gurganus tried to take action on, but he wasn't able to accomplish that. It was because the Afghans had to do it. We weren't allowed to. The biggest external threat to the base came from there."
The scorch marks visible on the compound wall in the right -hand photo is where the opium was cooked 10-days earlier. That village on Camp Bastion's south-eastern corner, where the poppy fields & opium kitchen were, was known as Now-Abad which is Pashtu for 'new buildings'.