Waging War on the Environment in Afghanistan

For some reason right now, I am unable to post links here, but I found an article called, “The Condition of Afghanistan’s Environment” by Daud Saba and Mardom Nama-e Bakhter through google.

It is quite old (from 1997) but I thought it would be interesting to see what the status was during the active rule of the Taliban compared to the current status of the environment in Afghanistan today.

As others have noted in their posts, the article mentions the loss of forested area as a huge problem in the already very arid country. Much of this problem is due to deforestation, but a significant amount has also by burned or destroyed by war technology in chemicals. These chemical weapons, which Afghanistan used in the war against the Soviet Union, contributed smog and pollution to the air. As a result, these are obviously direct environmental consequences from war, as opposed to what we have seen in other countries we have studied where much of the degradation is linked indirectly to war through oil.

The article talks about how even worse than the decreasing amount of forests as well as farming land is the terrifying environmental and human danger of land mines, which are planted for war purposes. As of 1997, there were more than 10 million land mines in Afghanistan. (WHAT!?)

We must ask, at what point does environmental degradation become a government’s weapon against its own people. The state of the environment in Afghanistan desperately needs to be addressed, but are there motives for those who hold power to prevent reform?