The Federal Foreign Office is stepping up its commitment to the efforts to create alternative sources of income for drug farmers in Afghanistan and, together with the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF), is carrying out a multiannual project aimed at the regeneration of pistachio forests in the northern province of Takhar.
Representatives of the German Embassy and the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) signed an agreement to this effect in Kabul today (22 May) in the presence of Federal Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who is on a three-day trip to Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The project is scheduled to run for up to four years. The Federal Foreign Office contribution amounts to one million US dollars (approx. 740,000 euro).
All in all, some 150 communities in Cha Ab, Rustaq, Farkhar and Kalafgan districts in Takhar province are to be involved. The German Government wants to use this project to revive the successful tradition of pistachio cultivation. Through the regeneration of Takhar’s traditional pistachio tree fields, it intends to promote the creation of alternative sources of income and to enable rural areas to experience the economic development enjoyed by urban centres. In the long term, the project is aimed at helping Afghanistan to become a pistachio exporting country once more.
The relevant districts in Takhar province lie in an isolated area over which the Government has little control at present and which, what is more, forms a corridor to the neighbouring province of Badakhshan —one of the largest opium poppy cultivation regions in Afghanistan.
Ismailimail 