Comments on: ADTs Are One Way Forward

By: anand

anand — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 07:39:28 +0000

Jeff, India has given or pledged $2.1 billions in grants to Afghanistan. India could easily offer billions in additional grants.

AQ linked networks and the Taliban also pose a grave threat to China:
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/08/uighur_terrorist_lea.php
http://ramansterrorismanalysis.blogspot.com/2009/07/chinese-fear-of-aviation-terrorism-by.html
China complained vigorously about Osama Bin Laden in the 1990s.

India and China should both contribute a lot more money to Afghanistan in addition to allowing their citizens to be hired as economic development agents.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 17:37:48 +0000

Following on Anand’s comment: the agricultural expertise exists in China, India and other developing countries, but realistically the money has to come from the U.S. There’s potential for synergy here.

Hiring Asian consultants would be one way for the ADTs to extend their resources — no pun intended — but if that’s what Washington wants to do, wouldn’t it be more practical to channel funding through the PRTs, or better yet USAID?

Full disclosure: I work for a military contractor in Kabul that specializes in an entirely different line of activity. But due to my interest in this topic, I was able to tack a small ag-extension project onto a very large bid which focuses mainly on our area of specialty.

My approach was exactly what Anand describes. We offered to hire consultants from another developing country to teach Afghan farmers how to grow a high-value item that isn’t currently produced here, but easily could be.

We’ve just been informed that we won the bid, and I’m starting to think now about how I can make this element of the project succeed. Anyone who considers himself well informed about agriculture — as I do not — is welcome to drop me an email for more details.

By: anand

anand — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 02:50:18 +0000

Andres makes a good point. China, India and Thailand in particular could probably contribute thousands of agricultural specialists. Any other countries good at agriculture?

Why isn’t Obama asking them to contribute? Why isn’t the Afghan Parliament passing resolutions asking foreign countries to contribute agricultural specialists?

By: Eli

Eli — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 17:57:54 +0000

One of the most frustrating experiences I had in Afghanistan was at the site of an ADT project near Bagram. The site was a demonstration plot for grapes – the ADT was trying to introduce better growing techniques including trellises (currently Afghan farmers grow grape vines that splat out of a mound, so the grapes lie on the ground and rot before they can be harvested). I asked locals what they thought of the project, and they were mostly indifferent. One said the project was “a joke” and that if we really wanted to help the people we would give them all jobs on Bagram. Sustainability is great and all, but only if the people want to be self-sustaining.

By: Andres

Andres — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 17:07:19 +0000

Very interesting story, I have read a few other pieces on efforts to replace poppies by saffron, and japanese development aid in agriculture, but somehow it seems to me that what you are describing is related mostly to conflict zones (the most serious at least) where the afghan military would be most active – stretched as it is, and ADTs as you describe being so few, it occurs to me that perhaps although the Department of Agriculture could have some of the expertise for this one should also look at other members of the coalition with perhaps more expertise in this type of farming – plenty of examples in India, Thailand, or even Latinamerica, were one to imagine such cooperation schemes growing and becoming sustainable.

By: Joshua Foust

Joshua Foust — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 15:35:34 +0000

Yeah, they operate much more like a PRT than anything else. I happen to think PRTs have it desperately wrong in how they function, so it strikes me as (slightly) misallocation what would otherwise be a good resource.

By: steve

steve — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 15:10:37 +0000

this is a cool story… so, these soldiers with pitchforks aren’t embedded in communities? rather, they travel, sort of like PRTs, to areas, do their thing, then head back to base, with occasional overnights in the field? i was just reading something from ICARDA/CGIAR, the international seed-bank organization, that said Afghanistan and central Asia are about to get hit with UG-99, the stem rust plague that has decimated wheat crops in east and north Africa. Apparently CGIAR/ICARDA has a guy on the ground in Afghanistan.