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KABUL IN THE 1950s
'Little America'. The photo is from a photo essay by M. Qayoumi in Foreign Policy. Check out the link in the text for a fascinating historical journey. I'm currently working on a so-called "community stabilisation" or "soft kinetic" counter insurgency (COIN) project in south Afghanistan. The idea is that once the military (the "hard kinetics") have "cleared" and "held" an area, we come in and distribute useful assets and help with the reconstruction. The truly innovative aspect is that our project is focused on agriculture (since most Taliban are actually farmers) and providing training in how to get better yields or use tractors more efficiently seems a great idea to win hearts and minds away from the extremists. More on the project itself in my company web site
FoodWorks Much of our work is undertaken in the productive river valleys of the Arghandab and the Helmand, the latter being one of the major rivers of the region with the former being an important tributary. This post is not, however, about the project interesting though it is, but about history of this area which is remarkable and fascinating. People have told me that they have sons serving here in the military (see Comments). They deserve to know some of the background.
The photo begins my tale which is told mainly through the hard work of others -
KANDAHAR IRRIGATION
Note the primary irrigation canal built by the Americans in the 1950s. It transformed the region.
Photo thanks to Andy Burridge and the links are here. The photo is from a semi-official Afghan Government publication dating from the 1950s. This is a picture taken in KABUL! It is taken from a really excellent photo essay that appears in
Foreign Policy The essay is by
Mohammed Qayoumi (dated May 27th 2010) who
is president of California State University, East Bay. He grew up in Kabul and came to work in the United States in 1978. Since 2002 he has volunteered his time in reconstruction efforts, serving on the board of directors to the Central Bank and as senior advisor to the minister of finance
.
Inspired to tell the story of what Afghanistan was like in the 1950s, Qayoumi has produced an excellent historical record of a country that appeared to be an example of what a developing country could become.
I use the word "appear" advisedly because the work, though impressive, is a little ingenuous. There is more to the story, and not all good; and this is where the Helmand Valley re-enters the picture (you were probably wondering how I was going to link it in).
In fact, the 'new' Aghanistan of the 1950s documented by Qayoumi was the product of an ambitious and dramatic social and economic engineering project undertaken by the US Government at the invitation of the then King, Zahir Shah. The work built a major dam on the Arghandab at Dahla (north of Kandahar) and one at Kajaki on the Helmand. These dams provided water to a huge irrigation system that completely changed the rural society of this entire southern region. Formerly the home of nomadic sheep herders, many were settled to grow field crops including wheat. The US engineers (led by the firm Morrison Knudsen that built the Hoover Dam) also constructed the town of Lashkar Gar, recently re-taken from the Taliban at the cost of British and American lives.
But the scheme had major problems, not least that it altered the society (one of its avowed aims) but it changed the groundwater leading to salinity and ultimately the collapse of the expected high wheat yields. Food riots contributed to the fall of the progressive government and the rise of radical Islam. By another irony, poppy thrives in the saline conditions, and so this intervention is one reason that the south of Afghanistan has become, to the dismay of the West, the main supplier of opium.
This story, which I have only summarised, is brilliantly told in words and pictures by
Adam Curtis on his blog at
Lost History of Helmand. Adam is a documentary film maker and his extensive record of the disastrous intervention by the West is surely a must read for any policy maker or development worker.
We are now engaged in a reprise of the Helmand Valley Scheme. But far from being welcomed by the local people as the Americans were in the 1950s, we are in the midst of a war for their hearts and minds. We hope to regenerate agriculture in the Helmand Valley, and young soldiers and those not so young) are sacrificing their lives to this task.
We better make sure that we do it right this time. My thanks to Messrs Qayoumi and Curtis for their really excellent work. This is a story that needs telling widely.
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Great blog! Keep em comming. I admire your persistance and dedication, as well as you realism about the situation in Afghanistan. :)