No Snow Could Be Disaster For Afghan Farmers
The view from the Afghan Desk living room
It’s been a mild winter so far. Usually by this time of year there have been one or two huge snowfalls in east-central Afghanistan, but not this winter.
That’s bad for farmers.
Farmers here rely on the spring snow melt to help them through the planting season, especially as the hot and windy summer approaches. Unfortunately, with the lack of accumulation this winter, irrigation ditches could be dry come April, meaning low-yields that could strike a blow to agriculture, Afghanistan’s largest economic driver (behind foreign aid and narcotics.)
When it snowed last week, the Afghans I work with in the city were literally singing out prayers of thanks, because they knew that their country cousins need the snow for a good harvest.
But as you can see from the above photo (taken this afternoon) there really isn’t much on the ground, even after an entire day of mild accumulation.
(To see an Afghan Desk photo essay on Afghan agriculture, click here.)
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It’s fascinating to hear that a problem fretted over where I live, is also of great concern all the way away in Afghanistan. Incomparable to the damaging effects a too-dry summer could have on parts of Afghan agriculture, the lack of snow here in Vancouver, Canada is gnawing away at the abundant confidence of the mighty behemoth that is the Winter Olympic Games. It seems that some amongst us think it’s the worse thing in the world. There is an extraordinary amount of cash being spent ensuring snow is where is should be. Makes me think it’s an ironic and bizarre world in which we live, and maybe we should pause for thought and work out what our priorities should be. Thanks again for another fascinating snapshot of life Afghan-style.
Thanks Lorna!
I’ve heard about the Vancouver snow problems and you raise a great point by comparing the possible effects of the exact same problem on such different places. If only Afghans had the same resources to make and move snow as the folks in B.C. do!
The “behind foreign aid” note reminds me to ask something of somebody who actually knows something about Afghanistan:
The factbook-stated “average income” in Afghanistan is about $700/year. The approx $80B that the US will spend on, ah, ’security’ related to Afghanistan works out to over $2100 per Afghan per year.
It hardly requires comment that, regardless of the words ‘moral’ or ‘immoral’, it’s just bizarre to spend 3X as much as a whole country makes to pacify them.
This goes back to Vietnam, where there was a running (not-a-)joke that we could simply pay them to stop fighting much more cheaply than fighting.
One is reminded that the so-called ’surge’ in Iraq was just 30,000 American troops, but 110,000 new Iraqi troops paid about $300/month each to provide security…with a strong suspicion that simply not doing IED’s every night was their main contribution.
My question (at last) is: if you had command, not of US soldiers, but their budget – and you couldn’t do any of the usual well-drilling, school-building aid stuff – all you could do was cut cheques to Afghans, or pay somebody to hand them krugerrands if they had no bank – would you? Would it do any good? Would they just take the money and go right back to blowing up foreigners and girl’s schools? Is there anybody, a la “Sons of Iraq” who would take the cheques and also take our side?
I ask, because it seems we’re not especially good at either making Afghanistan quiet with bombs and bullets, and we’re also not much good at turning it into Switzerland with construction efforts.
Cheques, however, man are we good at those. Virtually every cent is spent back here, of course, on equipment and supplies and ammo. But what if mighty America did cut the Pentagon budget by $100B and started just spending it on any Afghan that swore a loyalty oath and agreed to build schools and roads and so forth, entirely managed by Afghans?
It sounds crazy – it must be or some NGO would have tried it in 1963 – but I thought I’d ask.
Brander,
First of all, thanks for the thoughtful question, I’ll do my best to answer it.
There is an old saying that I’ve probably heard about a million times here: You can’t buy an Afghan…but you can rent one. The idea behind this is that no matter how much money or how many resources you throw into this country, the loyalties of its population will always be with their ethnic group, tribe or clan.
That said, your idea is far from crazy and has in fact gained legitimacy, not with US military leadership, but rather with very smart pundits in places like Washington.
But I don’t think that the kind of direct payment plan you outline–and others have advocated–would really work. What Afghanistan likely needs is a real reconciliation program that will bring Taliban and insurgent groups into a legitimate government that is recognized by the global (especially western) community.
This will take money. Lots of money.
At the London conference on Afghanistan last week, such a plan was outlined by Karzai and donors such as Japan agreed to foot the bill to make it happen. As you mentioned, the US is also pretty good at cutting checks and they will certainly get in on the spendy action.
There are many, many wildcards in a plan like this, not the least of which are Pakistan, Iran and Mullah Omar.
Another problem with your plan is that nobody here can be seen to take, as you put it, “our side” (well, not if they would like to continue inhaling oxygen, anyway.) This has to be seen as an Afghan process for Afghan benefit. any reconciliation effort fronted by the west, and the US military in particular, will be dead issue.
For these reasons, and a few more, just dropping sacks of cash in Helmand province, sadly won’t do the trick.
Thanks, PJ. I hardly expected an answer, much less the notion that a heavily-modified version of it is not completely crazy.
I’m not sure about the US, which has a disquieting penchant for building permanent bases on every nation that will let it, but the rest of us allies (I’m Canadian) would be very happy to be watching the development efforts from Barcaloungers at home if we could declare “victory” for the time it takes to pack. I believe we are mostly cured of the notion that we can somehow leave Afghanistan in a state that will make it permanently inhospitable to AQ’s return.
For which, a year or so of “rental” sounds about right.
Just as no Afghan can appear to be on “our side”, we need a partner who can (a) keep something resembling peace by Afghan standards (i.e. horrifying violence rate by Detroit standards) and (b) distribute cash that Does Good without channeling 95% to themselves…rather like the current government. , and (c) isn’t called the Taliban. [They can be the Taliban, but we need a rebranding, say "Helmand People's Democratic Party for Unicorns and Happiness" ]
I suspect we’re about ready to do deals with the devil (viz, current whispers of negotiations with the Taliban) if they can pull that off.
I know Pakistan has to feel that it controls just about every sparrow that falls within 100km of its borders; the Taliban want to be their proxy in that control. And yet, I gather that even southern Afghans want to remain independent to some degree. Of both Islamabad and Kabul. But still be called Afghans.
If somebody can thread a needle through all those needs and tie up a deal to exchange cash for stop-shooting-us, he gets “diplomat of the century”, of course. Good luck to them all.
In response to another comment. See in context »