Sayed Ali welcomed the fall of the Taliban, but the new political and social freedoms now on offer mean little to the poverty-stricken Afghan farmer. What is important is that he can grow opium poppies again - he has already planted his first crop.

In the small mud-brick village of Chinar Khalia, near the eastern city of Jalalabad, Ali and other local farmers are now looking forward to a bumper harvest around mid-April. The Taliban ban on poppy-growing, which slashed Afghan opium production by 94 per cent last year, is over. And the impact on the West will be huge - 90 per cent of Europe's heroin comes from opium grown in Afghanistan.

'The Taliban order on poppy-growing was false,' Ali said. 'It hurt many farmers that they could not grow poppies. Now I will earn money again.'

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