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War Provokes Environmental Nightmare |
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By Muddassir Rizvi*
After two decades of armed conflict in Afghanistan, forests have become deserts, rivers have dried up, crops are failing and cattle - and people - are dying of starvation. Since Oct 7, when the United States began bombing the country, the crisis has worsened.
ISLAMABAD - "How could we go back? Our lands are uncultivable. There is no water," said Malik Mohammad, an Afghan refugee from Baghlan province who is now living in a Pakistan near the Afghanistan border.
Along with his seven-member family, Mohammad has been braving the sweltering summers and frigid winter nights in his plastic sheet made out into a tent at New Jallozai camp near Peshawar.
Like thousands of other Afghan refugees, Mohammad does not want to go back to his home country despite the Taliban retreat in November, following the U.S.-led air strikes and Northern Alliance land offensives.
"I belong to a farming family. This is all I know. How would I feed my family if I go back to my barren, dry lands?" said the bearded man in his early forties.
Constant fighting after 1979 Soviet invasion of the country, where 75 percent of the land is occupied by mountainous terrain with little or no vegetation and the rest by deserts and farmlands, has turned it into an environmentalist's nightmare.
"We are looking at a country where crops have failed, fields and orchards withered, rivers, dams and wells dried up, and livestock herds, a source of livelihood for millions of Afghans, perished," commented an official of the World Bank, which is likely to be one of the lead agencies disbursing money for the reconstruction of Afghanistan.
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the drought that persisted for three years has affected much of Afghanistan, destroying the livelihood of more a than million people in one of the poorest countries in the world.
Of Afghanistan's 24 million inhabitants, the UNHCR estimates that more than three million have sought refuge in neighboring Pakistan and Iran, and at least six million have been internally displaced.
More than a quarter of the children in Afghanistan die before reaching the age of five and adult life expectancy is only 44 years. Some reports suggest that more than 10,000 villages and their surrounding environments have been completely destroyed by war and drought.
"Some 80 percent of the livestock is reportedly dead and eight of the 10 rivers in the region have run dry," says a UNHCR report on years of drought in the country.
More than two decades of war in the country have badly damaged the environment and natural resources. The U.S.-led attacks that began in October are taking their own toll on the already battered Afghan environment.
''We are still trying to gather the exact magnitude of damage done by months of American bombing, but we do have confirmed reports that many small and large dams and water reservoirs in the southern parts of the country are totally devastated,'' Siddique Momand, chief of the Afghan Refugees Affairs in the newly appointed government of the eastern Nangarhar province, told Tierramérica.
A detailed assessment of the environmental situation has yet to be conducted, but a fact sheet on Afghanistan, drawn up by the London-based humanitarian organization Oxfam International, gives an idea of the situation on the ground.
"Though the country was badly underdeveloped even before the Soviet invasion, the 20 years of war have reduced existing infrastructure to ruins, " according to Oxfam.
"Only two percent of the population has access to health care and 12 percent to safe drinking water. More than 70 percent of the population is illiterate and this rises to nearly 90 percent amongst women,'' says the fact sheet.
Meanwhile, some experts say that landmines in Afghanistan are the worst environmental problem, killing 15 people, mostly civilians, every day.
More than 10 million landmines in the country are awaiting their prey in farmlands, roadsides, forest, mountains and waterways. The cluster bombs dropped by the U.S. bombers in the "war on terrorism" have only added to the fear.
"In addition to agricultural recovery, food security, rehabilitation of water reservoirs and irrigation canals and educational institutions, Afghanistan's most pressing needs include fields free of landmines," said a leader of the National Islamic Front of Afghanistan (NIFA), which led the Peshawar Process - on the future of this devastated country - earlier this month in Bonn.
The so-called Peshawar group, consisting of Afghan exiles in Pakistan, was one of four groups that signed an accord in Bonn on Dec 5 for setting up an interim government for Afghanistan.
The reconstruction and rehabilitation effort is likely to cost more than 20 billion dollars over the next few years, say experts.
''Initial assistance could be aimed at food security, health, water and sanitation, provision of shelter, basic social infrastructure, and assistance to returning refugees and internally-displaced persons,'' said a spokesperson for the Asian Development Bank.
If all goes well, and the reconstruction efforts also serve as an incentive for peace among the military chiefs in Afghanistan, millions of refugees would be able to rebuild their lives in their hometowns. "All we ask for is peace, and for food to enable us to return," said Mohammad at the New Jallozai camp.
* Muddassir Rizvi is an IPS correspondent.
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