regard
saadat shafaq afghan

Your final questions are key. I think many outsiders “discover” the timber issue and jump to the conclusion that it explains all the fighting in the area. As I think you imply in your question, it certainly does not. There is lots more at work.

The timber trade is not organized like the opium trade. The most obvious difference lies in the way ordinary local people are involved. In the opium trade, the merchant hands the farmer his seeds and the money he’ll earn from it as a “loan” up front, then he comes back at harvest to collect the opium to pay back the “loan.” So the farmer is stuck. No such mechanism exists in the timber industry. Families have inherited rights to certain stands of trees, and hire people to harvest them. After that, the lumber sits in huge stacks, and an active market in harvested timber futures takes over. Lumber is bought, sold and resold without ever being moved. Once the price is right, it’s brought out of the area — very often, on trucks in broad daylight. All of this is quite different from the opium dynamic as I understand it. Perhaps there are similarities, I just don’ t know them.

The last question is a good one, and brings us back to the essential problem — which you state up front: the government has not (or will not) establish a way for the timber of Kunar to be harvested rationally and profitably. But the trees are money waiting to happen, so the timber will be harvested — and the ban ensures that will take place illegally and irresponsibly.

This inaction on the part of the government creates a class of criminals where one need not exist, and perpetuates an unsustainable approach to the rapidly disappearing forest of the province. It also demonstrates indifference on the part of the government: people live in poverty while being forbidden from cutting the valuable trees. Finally, it makes a mockery of rule of law and even the very purpose of government: the timber smuggling that takes place to get around the unsustainable complete ban on cutting is so blatant that it is basically open trade.

The situation with timber in Kunar is very pernicious, and it would be very, very helpful to the general population if it were fixed. But, to come back to your first questions, it would not end the fighting in the area. The genesis of that is more complicated.

Thanks again for your thoughtful blog.