All the Afghan grenades They are the typical fruit of the country that appears in all the headlines. What is their relationship to drug trafficking and with the taliban? Will its production increase after the fall of the Kabul government? Does the relationship between Pakistan and the new regime to emerge? Let's find out.
Why are there so many pomegranates in Afghanistan?
Afghanistan y coronavirus. The media does not talk about anything else. Almost all the news is about the arrival of the Taliban to power or the thousands of people fleeing the country. What they hardly notice is its precarious economy. This is mainly based on the primary sector. More specifically, in subsistence agriculture. That is why in this article we will discuss what is undoubtedly the quintessential fruit of the Central Asian country.
That the grenade is so present in Afghanistan is mainly due to the topography and climate of the place. It is clearly a mountainous country. The massif of Hindu Kush dominates the terrain with more than a hundred mountains that exceed Meters 6000. It is in its caves precisely where the Taliban have been hiding for the last twenty years. Thus, we understand that at tremendous altitude temperatures fluctuate greatly between winter and summer.
On average, the usual thing is that temperatures come down from zero degrees in the winter months. However, in summer they exceed thirty. Few are the trees capable of adapting to such a temperature range. One of them is the pomegranate, also typical of other very mountainous countries such as Armenia.
Afghan grenades: their history
Before the start of the war in the XNUMXs, with the soviet invasion, Afghanistan was considered the land of grenades. You don't find so many varieties of this fruit anywhere else. However, hostilities meant that their exports were reduced. We speak, above all, of what were its two largest markets: Pakistan and India. After the war in 2001Although with the Taliban still vying for power, this sector was reborn.
He did it at a crucial moment. As we have already said, the Taliban were still waiting for the moment of weakness that would allow them to attack the new government. That is why they prepared their own army. One of its main means of financing was the traffic of opium, from the poppy. Not in vain, between the eighty and ninety percent of the world's opium comes from this land! In a country where four out of ten Afghans live in poverty (according to Oxfam), it is logical that many work in these plantations to feed their families.
Heroin by grenades
That is why the recently fallen government of Kabul began to offer aid between 2007 and 2009 to farmers. The idea was that they would exchange opium for Afghan grenades. These are very profitable and constitute a gastronomic treasure. Afghanistan has forty-eight different classes. Including one without seeds. The objective of relaunching the pomegranate was successful in the first steps and by 2009 more than two and a half million pomegranates had already been planted.
United StatesA vital ally of the previous government, it also financed logistics programs. These managed to improve the conditions in which they were transported so that a greater proportion reached the international markets. They consisted mostly of countries in the Persian Gulf. It was a year later in 2010 when Afghanistan signed with Pakistan (its largest importer) a free transit agreement that allowed him to reach the market Indian. Despite the fact that the country of Ghandi is an enemy of Pakistan, it did not prevent Afghan trucks from reaching India.
The problems of Afghan grenades
The province that produces the most Afghan pomegranates is undoubtedly that of Kandahar . In this province on the border with Pakistan, some 806 hectares of this fruit. However, a great difficulty faced by farmers is border control between the two states. The presence of the Taliban on the other side of the Pakistani border posed security problems. In addition to the fact that grenades are sold too cheaply in this country, which does not make up for the arduous journey of the Afghans on mountain roads.
Farmers have long been calling for more accessible and safe markets such as Iran. However, their demands were not met. The program to exchange opium for grenades did not produce the expected results either. It did not stop the Taliban from increasing the acreage. They continued to finance their army with drug trafficking while expanding their dominions and their crops. The rest is history.
From now on, new questions arise. The taliban They have promised to end the drug trafficking that financed them after the end of the war. Will they fulfill the promise? Where will opium farmers go? Another important unknown will be the relations with Pakistan. This was one of the few states that the previous fundamentalist regime recognized. If the relations are good, will this mean a more secure, profitable and prosperous trade between the two? We will be pending.
