In the 1970s dried fruit made up about half of Afghanistan's exports. Apples, grapes and pomegranates were grown under irrigation, just like California's crops. (I was amazed at how much of the Colorado River has to be diverted to water Indio's date palms). Bombing has destroyed the irrigation canals, and there have been several years of drought. Opium poppies are a hardy annual which begin growing in the fall. I'm not sure how that works. Maybe it's like fall-sown wheat on the prairies - it grows a bit and then gets covered with snow, I think. I wonder if drought also means no snow? I think a lot of bulbs survive cultivation because they grow deeper than the farmers plow, though I wonder how seedlings cope. Maybe they grow deep fast. Diane Whitehead