The pomegranate harvest is life here; Taliban shattered it
Crack a pomegranate in half and its blood-red seedfilled chambers make it look almost like a broken heart. In Arghandab district, which in Afghanistan is almost synonymous with the fruit, a Taliban offensive has cut the heart out of the harvest season, leaving farming families desperate.
The offensive herein southern Afghanistan came at the end of October, the prime month for a pomegranate harvest that goes from September to November. On a recent day this month, Gulalay Am ir ia nd 10 of his workers gathered whatever was left in fear. Several farmers in an orchard nearby had recently been killedby buriedTaliban explosives.
“When the fighting started we couldn’tcomehere,” said Amiri, kneeling among his workers. Amiri and his men were disappointed at how few bag sand boxes they were able to fill .“Most of the pomegranates were destroyed .”
Arg hand abwa sat the center of some of the most intense fighting at the height of the war 10yearsago, whenAmericans came to Kandahar province to drive the Taliban out during President Barack Obama’s troop surge. But in recent years, locals said, things had stayed relatively quiet, and Arghandab had experienced a streak of good harvests.
But even in the midst of peace negotiations between the Taliban and Afghan government, residents described the recent fighting as the worst they had seen since the Soviet s came int he1980s, bulldozing their fields and scorching the earth.
In the broader scheme of
40 years of war, a botched pomegranate season pales in comparison to the rising violence across the country. But for the people of Arghandab — fromfarmer to shopkeeper, all trying to eke out livings — the fighting only highlights the uncertain fates confronting somanyAfghans despite the talk of peace.
“I am faced with loss,” Amiri said, his gloved hands rotating a pomegranate, looking for rotor cracks. Hehadto fire 40 of his workers because of the fighting — a trend that has affected roughly 1,000 day laborers in Arghandab.
An important part of Afghanistan’s agricultural economy belongs to the pomegranate, and while domestic ally traded and grown in other provinces, the fruit is the pride of Kandahar. The province is amajor exporter to Pakistan and India, but this year the shipmentswere late and smaller than usual, according to fruit exporters. One said he made only a third asmuch as usual this year.
The monetary losses pull down an economy already flagging, like other countries ’, with the spread of the coronavirus.