As the Dust Devils Danced : 9781504963534 : 03 Dec 2015 : I held the pod that had oozed the dark opium paste, which had since been scraped and packed away. The special tool with the multiple razor-sharp blades had left the unique diagonal parallel line cut marks. As I turned the pod, I saw four more areas where the same diagonal cut had been made. Stewart, our PRT agricultural advisor, took the pod from me and told me it had been a good harvest of opium this year. While we poured millions of dollars into the region, Uruzgan had become a center of the worldwide illicit opium trade. It is the foundation of their economy. Everything and everyone is tied to it. I looked west over the mountain toward the town of Deh Rawud, where Mullah Omar, the spiritual leader of the Taliban, grew up under the harsh hand of his uncle, who was also his stepfather. He would leave there for Kandahar and later bring the Taliban movement back to Uruzgan and all of Afghanistan. Though the Taliban would at first