LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan – Once known as "Little America," Helmand Province in Afghanistan's southern region is now considered one of the most volatile provinces in the region. Before the Soviet invasion in the 1970s, the U.S. Agency for International Development poured in vast resources and projects to help the province prosper. It built dams and irrigation systems and was welcomed by Afghans in this fertile area.

Atia Abawi poses with farmers in Helmand Province.

Now Helmand is permeated with insurgents, warfare and opium poppies. Afghanistan is responsible for producing more than 90 percent of the world's opium, more than half of which comes from Helmand.

But Afghans who remember the old days have warm memories of the American presence in Helmand.

On the one-and-a-half hour flight from Kabul to Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand, I was caught up in conversation with two middle-aged women who are part of the provincial council there. I asked them several questions trying to get their perspective on the situation. One of the women lived in the province through all the wars, the other left for Pakistan during the barbaric civil war that ravaged the country in the early 1990s and stayed there throughout the Taliban regime.

They told me anyone who remembers the 1960s and 1970s welcomes America's return to the province. It is expected that nearly a third of the anticipated 30,000 U.S. troops to come to Afghanistan this year will be based in the southern region where the Taliban and other insurgent groups have been gaining ground.

USAID is already there, fighting its own fight.

The organization is working to ensure the people and the province thrive once more, investing in old projects as well as the new. USAID helped the government of the province distribute to some 32,000 farmers about $400 worth of seeds and fertilizer each so they can grow something other than opium poppies.

It's a small step to fixing an enormous problem, but it's one that is welcomed by many.

"If you can just help the people of Afghanistan in this way, the fighting will go away," farmer Abdul Qadir told me to share with the world. "These Taliban and other enemies of the country will also disappear."

Qadir explained that building infrastructure and helping the people of Helmand will have more of an effect than any gun or bomb ever will.