Political Counselor Haidari Speaks to the U.S. National Guard
Agribusiness Development Teams
Political Counselor M. Ashraf Haidari spoke to a large group of national
guardsmen from the States of Indiana and Texas in Bloomington, Indiana, on
October 14, 2009. Organized in Agribusiness Development Teams, they will
soon be deployed to the provinces of Khost, Paktiya, and Ghazni, where the
agricultural experts will provide technical assistance to local farmers,
create agribusiness opportunities, as well as rebuilding and building
irrigation systems. Haidari extended the gratitude of the Afghan Government
and people to the national guardsmen for deploying to Afghanistan, welcoming
their badly needed expertise to help revitalize the country's agriculture
sector.
"We in the Government have been asking for increased attention and resources
to the agriculture sector for the past eight years. And, now, we welcome the
realization that in order to help reduce poverty in Afghanistan and to
create livelihoods for our rural population, the agriculture sector must be
revitalized," said Haidari. Highlighting the problem of opium poppy
cultivation and production in Afghanistan, he noted that sustainable rural
development was the key to addressing the problem on the long run. Haidari
referred to the successful experience of Thailand in eliminating drug
production over a long period of time through sustainable alternative
development assistance to the country's affected areas. He said that the
problem in Afghanistan was now increasingly isolated to a handful of
southwest provinces, and that the number of drug-free provinces in the
country had increased.
"Where the Government is present and we have provided alternative
development assistance to sharecroppers, drug production has declined. But
where our presence is limited or weak, the problem has bloomed," noted
Haidari. He called on the international community, as well as regional
players, to fight narcotics together, while helping Afghanistan strengthen
its governance and law enforcement institutions to arrest and punish drug
traffickers, who drive the drug industry in the country. He also called on
the international community to fight drugs on the demand side, as much as
they try to do that on the supply side in vulnerable environments, such as
Afghanistan.
"At the end of the day, narcotics and its trafficking are a major
transnational security threat, which cannot be addressed in Afghanistan
alone. We need to fight it on many levels, and assist Afghanistan with
long-term development and law enforcement assistance to get rid of this
threat," said Haidari.
