Construction sites where fake marble mansions are sprouting and roads are clogged with fleets of expensive four-wheel-drive Land Cruisers are testimony to the profits of a trade spawning epic corruption eating at the new Afghanistan from the inside.The involvement of government officials, police officers and warlords making vast profits is discussed by diplomats and drugs experts in private. In Kabul, it is increasingly obvious that drugs money is taking over the city and rebuilding it. Three years after the fall of the Taliban, the crop demonised by the West is flourishing in the new Afghanistan it has forged. This year, 1,300 square kilometres of poppies were growing, an all-time high.Many fear bloodshed and increased instability if the drugs war becomes a shooting war, as looks almost inevitable. Onions and wheat are all that will be sprouting in his fields after the Kabul government issued a ban, he insisted yesterday, although a teacher in a nearby school said every farmer in the district grows poppy because they would be fools to grow anything else.
For dirt-poor farmers, opium brings 10 times the price of wheat And they have never had it so good. Sowab Khan claims he has planted no opium this year.

A United Nations expert on extrajudicial killings, Philip Alston, asked the government to allow him to investigate the incident. But he received a curt refusal: “It is not the right time to come,” Mr Thaksen told him.. The changing pattern of violence since a low-level separatist insurgency in the 1980s is causing alarm. Attacks have been considerably better organised, and have targeted ordinary citizens.Few officials in the Bangkok administration are talking about addressing the underlying economic problems in the region where more than 70 per cent of companies are owned by the Buddhist minority, while Muslim labourers must often cross into Malaysia for casual work.While, on the surface, the flocks of folded doves set to fall on the south show Mr Thaksin heeding calls for a gentler approach, the Prime Minister remains determined to ignore outside criticism of his handling of the spiral of violence.

Islamic schools are under scrutiny, after rumours that radical teachers may be preaching Jihadi doctrine learned in Pakistan’s religious schools. This is caused by the illegal arms trade, the illegal oil trade, smuggling and other underground trades,” he said.Half of the region’s 400 state schools have been barricaded due to security fears. “It is the assumption of the state to always focus on separatism. But violent incidents have been partly caused by influential figures with underground business interests.”This war among rival gangs and influential figures involves many people and a huge financial interest. Once he etches a tattoo, the monk blesses the design by chanting a mantra, and then administers a swift kick to the recipient with his right leg.Imam Winai Simun, of the Central Islamic Council of Thailand, says there is more to the armed struggle than a battle for autonomy.

After Ah-duenan Singha, a Thai soldier, claimed to have emerged miraculously unharmed from gun battles in Narathiwat this summer, the guru monk Phra Chaiya has been overwhelmed with requests for similar protection. The authorities should use local people, but they don’t.”These appeals for a calmer approach have fallen on deaf ears, while Buddhist soldiers and police have been queuing for sacred tattoos that they believe will make them invulnerable to bullet wounds. “The government has used violence to solve the problem, and it hasn’t worked,” she said “Police and soldiers don’t understand the culture here. Fearing reprisals from local officials, she asked not to be named, but her assessment was scathing.

A government fact-finding mission has not soothed the situation much, as Buddhist residents feel their plight is not being addressed by international human rights advocates.”The situation will become worse,” one Pattani woman predicted to radio reporters last week. But the situation will get difficult if it is left to the command of the local army.” Anwar Ibrahim, the Malaysian opposition leader, said. “Thaksin’s initial reaction seems to be pathetic – to completely ignore the problems, and to be so arrogant,” he said.Islamic leaders have called for calm, but the grief is turning to anger. Malaysia’s former prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, proposed autonomy for the south “This is like the Palestinian issue,” he said “If settled early, there will be no problems. So everyone there was hauled in for questioning.”A few low-ranking soldiers were in charge of putting them into the trucks.