Tropic of Chaos_ Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence - Christian Parenti [50]
Drought-resistant and valuable, poppy is nonetheless an outlaw crop, attacked by the NATO occupation and Hamid Karzai government but defended by the Taliban. Thus, drought-fueled poppy cultivation is one more factor pushing farmers toward the insurgents. As one journalist explained, “A poor harvest, especially if combined with lack of food support, would likely make the cash offered by the Taliban to its fighters more tempting, and undermine support for a central government already seen by many as remote and corrupt.”31 The International Council on Security and Development (formerly the Senlis Council) argued that US-backed eradication campaigns were “the single biggest reason many Afghans turned against the foreigners.”32
Drought and flooding lead to increased poverty. Poverty fuels the sense of grievance and desperation among the people and creates ranks of unemployed unmarried young men. Destitute farm hands—unable to afford a bride price or to purchase land or even find work—drift into the ranks of the Taliban and become fodder for US drones, the war’s human fuel.
As Ahmed Rashid has explained, “The United States and NATO have failed to understand that the Taliban belong to neither Afghanistan nor Pakistan, but are a lumpen population, the product of refugee camps, militarized madrassas, and the lack of opportunities in the borderlands of Pakistan and Afghanistan. They have neither been true citizens of either country nor experienced traditional Pashtun tribal society. The longer the war goes on, the more deeply rooted and widespread the Taliban and their transnational milieu will become.”33
We might add, the longer climate change goes on with its causes unmitigated, and with no adaptation to its effects, the more pervasive this rootless, millenarian Taliban milieu will become. In this regard, the poppy economy and its armed defense are local adaptation mechanisms.
Sticky Sap
“Three years ago we didn’t grow much poppy,” said my host, a local farmer and former mujahideen fighter. “Now everyone grows it, even the police chief. Tomorrow I will get you some.”
How does the poppy trade function within and fit into the war? In 2004 I traveled to Wardak, a province an hour outside Kabul. The guerrillas have since retaken Wardak, but it was then still in government hands. Wardak looks like New Mexico: green valleys with scattered poplars and clusters of adobe-style walled compounds, qalas, set back from the road. Looming above it all are huge, barren mountains and blue skies. I went to Wardak with photographer Teru Kuwayama and a man we’ll call Mustafa, who introduced us to his family, or at least his male relatives. (As Pashtun custom dictates, the women were kept hidden from the eyes of strange men.) We sat in a carpet-lined, second-story sitting room, or betek. This room, in which we ate and slept, stood safely away from the family quarters. Our hosts were burly men with beards, many of whom had fought with the mujahideen warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar during the 1980s and 1990s. One of them had just come back from Iran, where he worked in an ice-cream cone factory. He was about to marry a woman he hadn’t seen since she was twelve and he a few years older. The whole family was getting ready for the big day, so our weekend road trip turned into a party, with lots of eating, tea drinking, cigarette smoking, laughing and high-stakes, all-night gambling.
One of the men explained that a severe drought, then in its sixth year, had destroyed Wardak’s more traditional crops, like grapes, apples, and wheat. The drought-resistant poppy was all they had left. “Everyone around here