Variations in opium poppy production in Afghanistan hadlong been associated with how the state was perceived at the time of the2001 invasion. The Taliban, for instance, had imposed a cultivation banin 2000–01. But the international community’s subsequent attempts toprohibit opium production became intimately linked with its own state-building project, as rising levels of cultivation were seen as evidenceof the failure of those international donors who spearheadedreconstruction in provinces like Helmand and Nangarhar.Mansfield’s book examines why drug control has beenimposed in Afghanistan; he documents the actors involved; and hescrutinises how prohibition served divergent and competing interests.Drawing on almost two decades of fieldwork in rural areas, he explainshow these bans affected farming communities, and how prohibition enduredin some areas while in others opium production bans underminedlivelihoods and destabilised the political order, fuelling violence andrural rebellion.Above all this book challenges how we have come to understand political power in ruralAfghanistan. Mansfield highlights the role that rural communities haveplayed in shaping the political terrain, including establishing theconditions under which they could persist with opium production.