Zangobay - Farmers in eastern Afghanistan have resumed growing poppy and processing opium just days after the ouster of the fundamentalist Taliban regime.
The shoots are still tiny, no more than two or three centimetres long. Poppy seeds were planted less than two weeks ago. But in three months, the fields will be covered with big flowers from which the farmers extract the milk that becomes opium.
Zangobay village, where poppy cultivation is rife, lies within view of a highway leading to Pakistan, the Jalalabad airport and a major military base.
And Zangobay is not the only village sporting poppies. On the other side of Jalalabad, towards White Moutains and the caves of Tora Bora, there are more poppy fields, as also in the neighbouring Khogiani district.
In this area as well as in the southern provinces of Kandahar and Helmand, opium poppies are part of a tradition.
By late 1990s, Afghanistan accounted for three-fourths of global opium production and thus of heroin. Opium production shot up from 2,000 tonnes in 1995 to 4,600 tonnes in 1999, UN figures show.
But in July 2000, the Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, decreed a ban on poppy cultivation, in an effort to win international diplomatic recognition. It hit poor farmers hard already struggling after three years of drought. So when the Taliban were driven out of Jalalabad by mid-November, it was a green light to replant poppies: some even ploughed through fields of wheat to plant opium poppy.
Some farmers try to maximise their profits by transporting their product to major markets on the road to Pakistan.
There is just one troubling thought for the farmers: the new Afghan government's intentions. The Foreign Minister, Mr Abdullah Abdullah, has said a commission would be set up to combat drugs. However the current reality, as a UN official said, is that "there is no sign of restriction on the cultivation of poppy in the near future".