Changes in Afghanistan
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Mohammad cultivated green land in Wardak, a district near Kabul, all his life. A gray beard farmer oversaw the orchards of apples and apricots, fields of wheat, and many other animals, from cattle to sheep.
His animals are gone and the orchards are dry and the next drought, Mohammad is now tearing down trees without firewood. “You can’t imagine they were fields. They look like desert, ”he said of his place.
Extreme drought and economic hardships in Afghanistan prove to be a major problem for the country the new rulers of the Taliban, which international aid agencies fear could become a financial crisis.
An electric spring that helps irrigate Mohammad’s site has dried up, as do two nearby rivers. This year’s drought was so severe that Mohammad’s family had no water to drink. “This summer we decided to go.”
Her family is now dispersed. Her five children have moved to Kabul. He decides to go west, to find work in a farmer’s field.
The rural areas of Afghanistan account for about half a third of the country’s population of about 40m, most of whom depend on agriculture directly or indirectly. But repeated droughts, one of the consequences of a country most affected by climate change, are threatening millions with food shortages.
The people of the Taliban its origins come from rural areas, where their legal status, as women, is more easily accepted than in the cities. But as the country faces a decline in foreign aid, rising prices and declining incomes, researchers say the Taliban have not been able to cope with the drought and extreme poverty in rural areas.
The UN has warned of famine, with a third of the population starving and many more at risk.
“It’s not just a drought. There is a severe economic downturn as a result of this crisis. . . then you have a financial problem and the borders are closed to sell, ”says Ashley Jackson of the Overseas Development Institute, thinker.
“It is this great storm that, on the surface of the drought, everything that can help people to survive or endure has been removed.”
Afghanistan faces climate change challenges The monsoon rains and snowstorms of the year are causing more drought in some parts of the country and further flooding, according to a UN report from 2016, which warned that drought would occur every year.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies estimates that more than 80% of the country’s population is suffering from drought.
The crisis has been exacerbated by human oppression and a long war. Afghanistan’s population has skyrocketed since the Taliban came to power in the 1990’s, according to the World Bank, where many wars in the last 20 years have taken place in towns and villages – destroying crops, disrupting trade and killing thousands of people.
Haji Jan, a grape farmer in the Shamali valley near Kabul, remembers how the business started a few years after the US war broke out in 2001, due to access roads and refrigerator vehicles allowing him to export his produce to Pakistan. “Our business was good,” he said.
But as the war intensified, roads and canals that helped to irrigate the field were closed. This year’s harvest was in short supply when the war between the Taliban and the Afghan army broke out. “There were a lot of worries,” he said. Its good grape yield has “turned to dust”.
The Taliban must decide what to do about Afghanistan’s most important issue: the poppies. Cultivating opium extracts more than three times since the US war broke out despite billions of dollars. It is a charity for the poor and works for hundreds of thousands of people across the country, says Philip A Berry, a researcher at King’s College London.
The Taliban, which aided their drug attacks, have promised to reduce the size of the poppy to other countries. This could lead to rural people, perhaps grateful for the end of the war, against them, Berry warned.
“All the restrictions on opium in the past two decades have shown that unless financial means exist, any ban can be reduced,” he said. “In that case, the new government will have to relinquish its support to the rural areas and possibly fight violence.”
For Gul Jan, agriculture no longer offers any protection. He still lives on his side in the same Wardak district as Mohammad but no longer farms, instead working in Kabul as a bus driver. His relatives, who work with him, have moved to Iran to work.
Its apple orchards and apricot orchards are now the wood of the winter solstice. His family tries to keep the remaining trees inside their mud by bathing near them and allowing running water to seep into the soil.
But they admit that their efforts are in vain. “She’s dead,” he said. “We know he’s dead so there’s nothing we can do.”