In a country as wounded as Afghanistan, environmental concerns might seem a luxury–a concern to be saved for calmer times. But the country’s burgeoning wood racket–like drugs and arms smuggling–is a lucrative business for criminal outfits looking to make money in war-torn regions. Since the fall of the Taliban, legitimate businesses have been slow to get off the ground in Afghanistan. But illegal logging has boomed, largely because of the central government’s limited authority outside Kabul. Hardwood–pine and cedar–has been among Afghanistan’s most profitable exports over the past two decades. Now increasingly sophisticated smuggling operations, which bring their timber to market in Asia or the Gulf, can rake in 20 times the original price on a cord of wood. “Wood smuggling is huge,” says Shafiqullah, a Customs officer in Jalalabad. “The drug trade pales in comparison.”
Poverty is perhaps the most powerful recruiter for these illegal operations. “People come to us and ask for schools and medical clinics,” says Alain de Bures of Madera, a French NGO sponsoring a reforestation program in Kunar province. “When no help comes, they sign contracts with smugglers and cut wood.” Wealthy businessmen–Afghans or Pakistanis–buy large chunks of land and employ day laborers to cut wood for as little as 30 cents a day. The clear-cutting is leaving its mark: nearly a quarter of the country’s trees have disappeared, according to Ishaq Sufizadeh, head of the Ministry of Agriculture’s forestry division.
The collapse of the Taliban regime made the tree traffickers even more daring. Bulldozers now dig clandestine paths toward the Pakistani border for logging trucks. Other gangs transport the wood down riverways. To escape detection, the routes constantly change: “When we block one route, they quickly find another,” says Sufizadeh.
President Hamid Karzai and his government are trying to stem the tide. Last year he banned all organized logging and set up forest patrols–a “green force”–to catch smugglers. The security forces, however, are no more immune from the lure of cash than rural villagers are. “They’re paid off,” says Customs officer Shafiqullah. “You can usually see a security escort in front and back of the wood trucks.”
Of course, the people most hurt by the wood racket are rural farmers, many of whom are the ones swinging the axes. When a large plot of trees is cleared in the mountains, the topsoil washes down, ruining the farmlands below. In the village of Milau at the base of the Tora Bora mountains, Sediqullah, a 27-year-old farmer, says that boulders have rolled down onto his land, and about 70 percent of his village’s farmland has been ruined by erosion.
Still, the trees will likely continue to fall as long as logging remains the only way for farmers to make ends meet. “We’re not stupid,” says woodcutter Jamal. “We know the trees are our country’s natural resource. If the government would build us schools, clinics and roads, we wouldn’t cut trees anymore.” Until then, Afghanistan’s forests are likely to be another casualty of war.
