Basking in the ‘red gold’ glitter
In the early days of Taliban control in the 1990s, a low-paid agricultural worker began travelling from village to village in Afghanistan’s west with an unlikely pitch to farmers: Switch from the traditional wheat crop and focus on saffron, the notoriously labourintensive spice.
To many people, including some of the man’s own bosses at a Danish aid organization, the proposal was misdirected, maybe even foolish, and certainly well above his $50-a-month pay grade. Afghanistan was in the midst of a brutal drought with famine threatening. Keeping Afghans fed was the priority.
But the aid worker, Hashim Aslami, was adamant, arguing that even though harvesting the spice can be tricky and time consuming, the financial returns can be substantial:
Known as “red gold,” saffron can sell for as much as $700 (U.S.) a pound on the local market and much more elsewhere.
Saffron could even be an economically competitive substitute for the opium poppy, Aslami argued.
He eventually convinced the higher-ups, winning a $100 grant to begin a pilot program on four farms in Herat province.
Two decades later, Aslami, a soft-spoken, 63-yearold with what remains of his hair dyed jet black, is one of the proud visionaries of a rare success story: A $25-million export industry that continues to grow despite the country’s seemingly endless war.
Afghanistan is now the third-largest saffron producer in the world, behind Iran and India.
Aslami has risen to become the government’s top adviser in the flourishing saffron sector, which he says is growing by about 20 per cent a year. As someone who apparently sees work as the ultimate purpose in life, his waking hours are spent immersed in saffron, in meetings, in reading, in everyday conversation.
“Except when I am asleep, the rest of the time is all on saffron,” Aslami said with a smile, during an interview at his small apartment above a bank in central Kabul, the Afghan capital. His wife of 30 years, Talat Aslami, sat beside him.
At the moment, the dream to overtake opium is far from being realized. Afghan saffron accounts for only about 4 per cent of global production.
Saffron is harvested from a fall-blooming variety of the crocus flower, a hardy perennial that grows from bulbs and can withstand Afghanistan’s harsh climate. The flowers, each containing three red stigmas that will become the spice, have to be picked by hand in the early morning, before the blossoms open to the sun.
The plants bloom for only about three weeks a year, in late October and early November. After being plucked, the flowers are dried and the stigmas separated later. Harvesters must wear clean clothes, gloves and masks — the slightest odours can be absorbed by the flower, reducing the quality of the spice.
It is a labour-intensive process, which accounts for the high prices the spice commands and for the structural advantage that Afghanistan, with its abundance of cheap labour, enjoys over traditional producers such as Spain.