In a matter of weeks, a Marine Regimental Combat Team will be heading to Afghanistan’s Helmand province, to reinforce the thousands of marines already patrolling this poppy-growing heartland. It’s a move Nagl — and some other military observers — find questionable. Helmand is relatively-sparsely populated. And it pales in importance to neighboring Kandahar province, the capital of Afghanistan’s south and the birthplace of the Taliban. “I didn’t understand putting the first troops into Helmand this summer,” Nagl says. “I’m having a hard time trying to convince myself of it now.”
I don't understand what the confusion is based on. Al Capone robbed banks because that's where the money is. Helmand is the First Bank of Omar. The paragraph itself notes the poppies. That's where the Taliban get a lot of money to buy their bombs and rabble gunmen. Not that Kandahar isn't important, too, or that it is game over by winning in Helmand:
This doesn't mean that the results are immediate. But in the long run, denying the Taliban the money from opium and "taxes" will reduce their ability to bribe tribal leaders, pay for gunmen, and pay for roadside bombings.
I just don't get why trying to cut off a major source of Taliban revenue that also locks in a lot of farmers to the Taliban cause (because they grow and sell poppies) is a bad first step.
