There were also crucial questions over how many UK troops should be on the ground, how to tackle the opium trade, and how to engage with neighbouring states, he added.

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Land-grabbers who rented government plots illegally to fly-by-night shops, taking money that belonged to the city. (Mr Hamidi would burst into such places with shovel in hand, pushing people aside, shouting at them to clear their rubbish away.) And, over all these, the swaggering local powerbrokers who demanded their share of the opium trade, the military contracts and the building projects, like boys fighting for candy at a wedding.

ECONOMIST: Ghulam Haider Hamidi

Last year he also called on the UK government to licence the opium poppy trade in Afghanistan, to help combat a world shortage in the pain-killing drug morphine.

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