Afghans struggle to supplant poppies with fruit crops

Frosty relations between Kabul and Islamabad have put a brake on Afghanistan's ambitious plans to boost fruit exports, seen as vital to providing farmers an alternative to poppy cultivation which fuels the Taliban insurgency. Pomegranates and grapes have long been the pride of Afghan agriculture, but exports from the landlocked country have suffered due to poor air connectivity and frequent border closures by the country's regional nemesis Pakistan. The sight of hundreds of long-haul trucks stuck along border towns became all too common in 2016, with tonnes of fruits and perishable items going to waste and forcing some farmers to return to the more lucrative cultivation of poppy. "We invested huge sums of money on growing fresh fruits in our orchards," grape farmer Abdul Samad from Panjwai district in southern Kandahar told AFP. "We are very frustrated that Pakistan frequently shut the border during harvest season. We have no choice but to return to poppy farming. It will fetch us a lot more money than fruits." Pakistan sporadically shut the main border crossings as tensions flared due to firing incidents between the troops of both nations. Pakistan announced last June it was planning more check posts and fencing along the 2,600-kilometre (1,600-mile) frontier to filter the flow of militants. The move prompted consternation from Afghanistan which does not officially recognise the so-called Durand Line as the international border. In 2015 around 52,000 tonnes of pomegranates were exported to Pakistan, the UAE and India. Last year the exports dropped to 15,000 tonnes, a small fraction of the total production. Other fruit exports also suffered. "We were ready and hoping to export up to 40,000 tonnes of grapes from Kandahar, but Pakistan closed the gate for 17 days (in October), not allowing our traders to export their produce," said Nasrullah Zaheer, head of the Afghan chamber of commerce in Kandahar. - 'Determined to grow poppy' -

Agriculture Minister Assadullah Zamir accused Pakistan of using border security as a pretext to sabotage Afghan exports and shield its own farmers from competition. "This is not the first time that border closures have happened. We had exactly the same issue in 2015 during harvest time," he said, without stating the estimated monetary losses. "But we are here to support our farmers and the government is willing to cover a part of alternate transportation costs such as air cargo," he added. New Delhi recently announced it would launch an air-cargo link between Afghanistan and India that will help it bypass its border issues and open new markets for traders. The plans, however, remain at initial stages, frustrating farmers. For years, Afghanistan has tried to give farmers alternatives such as fruit crops and saffron to wean them away from poppy farming -- the lifeblood of the Taliban insurgency. But those efforts are failing and opium remains an economic linchpin for many Afghans. Farmers need not bother with exports as a sprawling network of drug smugglers picks up opium produce directly from their farms, offering lucrative prices that normally far exceed the income from traditional agriculture. In 2016, Afghanistan saw a 10 percent jump in opium cultivation compared to the previous year because of bumper harvests, collapsing eradication efforts and declining international aid to combat drugs. "Even if the government arrests us we are determined to grow poppy," said Kandahar farmer Abdul Shukoor. "Pakistan closes the border randomly and our government is doing nothing."

CPEC achieves exceptional progress in 2016

Remarkable progress has been achieved in mega project of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) in 2016. Chinese media reported that 16 early harvest projects, including several power stations, highways and projects related to Gwadar Port, are under construction and tens of thousands of new jobs have been created for the local people. Last month, a trade convoy organised by the two countries successfully passed through the western part of Pakistan for the first time from the North to the South, proving the connectivity of local roads and the realisation of the concept of one corridor with multiple passages under the CPEC. Meanwhile, Gwadar Port has also marked its first export of massive containers to overseas destinations in November, showing that the port’s designed handling capacity has been restored. "Since the commencement of the CPEC, 2016 is the year when we have seen a project completed or start working. In addition to the Gwadar Port operations, PM Nawaz has also inaugurated a number of others projects in the country, especially in some routes in the western part of the CPEC. There are at least 39 projects, the majority of them related to energy, where obvious progress has been seen during 2016," Saeed Chaudhry, director of the Islamabad Council for International Affairs, told Xinhua in a recent interview. Chaudhry’s remarks include the second phase of upgrading the Karakorum Highway from Havelian to Thakot and the highway linking Pakistan’s largest cities of Karachi and Lahore. Both of the two highways have been smoothly implemented and for the former, the Abbottabad Tunnel construction project has begun and seen substantive progress.

 In terms of the energy field, China is helping to boost green, low-carbon and sustainable energy development to address power shortage in Pakistan. Several wind power farms and hydro-power stations are under construction and the eye-catching Port Qasim coal-fired power project in Karachi, which adopts a costly method to lower the temperature of the seawater used to cool the generating units in order to prevent them from heating up water temperature around the coast, is expected to be completed ahead of schedule and play its role in addressing Pakistan’s electricity shortage.

"We are not coming only for big projects, we are here to help countries, such as Pakistan, to plan and design their future energy development blueprints so as to address problems they are facing and to make the projects a reality," Yan Zhiyong, Chairman of the Power Construction Corporation of China, who is in-charge of the construction of the Port Qasim coal-fire power project, told Xinhua earlier. According to Bilal Khan, a senior economist at Standard Chartered Bank, Pakistan, due to the enhanced infrastructure such as roads and railways brought by the CPEC, the gross domestic product (GDP) growth should increase from around 4.7 percent last year to around 6 percent by 2019, and stay around the same level for 2020 in the country. "The CPEC itself, for Pakistan at a bare minimum, offers a significant opportunity for the country to address its supply-side constraints, such as weak foreign capital inflow," Bilal Khan told Xinhua earlier, adding that the CPEC will attract foreign direct investment from both private and public sectors to help in keeping a balanced current account in Pakistan against a backdrop of rebounding oil prices. "Before the CPEC, Pakistan’s economy was feeble and stagnant, and investors, even ones from Pakistan were reluctant to invest, but now the economic indicators of Pakistan have turned positive, investors from around the world are flocking to Pakistan, and the country’s economy has been given new life and is booming and full of future prospects. Pakistan’s main issue is shortage of revenue and unemployment, but the CPEC will provide solutions for the both," Chaudhry also pointed out  The professor also said that further afield, from Russia to central Asian states to Sri Lanka, the CPEC will bring a change to the countries’ economies and to the lives of more than 3 billion people living in this region."The project has already become the center of global attention, especially in our region," he concluded.