Want to Win the War in Afghanistan? Forget Guns - Think Pomegranates.
By nonny mouse Monday Nov 10, 2008 10:00am
James Brett is an Englishman who, in 1999 while on a business trip to Peshawar in the north west province of Pakistan, had his first glass of pomegranate juice, and fell in love with it. He founded the first pomegranate juice drink in the UK, Pomegreat (.pdf). Further research led him to Afghanistan, where the best pomegranates in the world are grown, particularly in the Kandahar region. A recovering substance abuser, Brett was also aware that Afghanistan was a major producer of heroin.
In 2007, Brett was invited to Kabul to talk to farmers from various regions of Afghanistan about growing pomegranates. He flew to Peshawar and drove through the Khyber Pass heading to Kabul While driving through the Nangarhar Province, he noticed a farmer in a field of opium poppies. After the seminar in Kabul, Brett bought a large piece of card and a blue marker pen, and wrote 'Pomegranate is the Answer'. On his return drive back to Peshawar, he saw the same farmer again in the field, jumped out of the car and ran toward the farmer with his makeshift sign. His horrified translator chased after this mad ginger-haired Brit, yelling, 'Don't go in there, you could be shot!' Undetered, Brett talked to the bewildered farmer through his translator, about the farmer's life, his family, his children, how he lived and why he grew opium, about Brett's own addiction to drugs. Brett explained that pomegranate was not only the best option as an alternative crop to opium poppies, but was the only feasible one for the Afghan climate and growing conditions, and promised to return to the farmer's land a couple months later with pomegranate saplings. He went home and set up a charity called Pom354.
Brett followed through on his promise, returning a few months later to find the farmer had discussed this idea with sixteen other families with land around his own; all of them wanted to become involved. From there, the plan snowballed – in January, 2008, Afghanistan Television interviewed him, and other farmers asked him for help in changing their fields from poppies to pomegranates. The local member of Parliament and a respected Elder in the Tribal system wanted to know more. A tribal meeting covering the entire Nangarhar Province was called, and 200 Tribal elders invited.
The tribal elders agreed to finish poppy cultivation and switch to growing pomegranates throughout the entire Nangarhar Province by next year, making the region of 1.3 million inhabitants opium poppy free for the first time in a hundred years. The elders told Brett that their decision was based not only on a desire to maintain a level of stability, but because he was the first person who had ever come to them as just an ordinary man rather than a member of a foreign government or a military advisor, someone who simply wanted to see positive change. The tribal elders and Brett then conducted the official opening ceremony in that first farmer's field, now cleared of poppies, and planted the first pomegranate tree sapling. A national meeting is now being planned to expand the pomegranate industry throughout Afghanistan, with the broad support of the Afghani tribal elders as well as the government.
If you'd like to listen to an interview with this remarkable, refreshingly mad Englishman, tune into this webcast on Radio New Zealand. You'll be glad you did. (h/t Sue Gee)
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how poetic.
Simply amazing!
I read an article last week and it quoted Michael Moore. According to
him over a billion people on this planet have little or no clean
drinking water. The UN estimates that it could cost as little as $10
a head to get them water. That is one month of Iraq. One month.
We could be the good guys, paridigm shifting life saving super heroes
or what we are bloated over consuming narcissist control freaks.
I just LUUUUVV me some pomegranates in my Scot's Oats.
Full of
orientsanti-oxidants!.
But, but, but the CIA can't continue the war on drugs if the DEA isn't kept busy fighting the cartels set up by the USA to keep the drug lords fat and happy. Then who's gonna be able to make the bombs needed to reign on foreign lands? Just think of all the unemployment pomegranates cause.
[/snark]
.
The CIA sells and launders billions in drug money and has for years.
We can't legalize drugs without REALLY throwing our economy out of
whack.
Yeah, and then govt. agencies will have to think of a new way to criminalize Black people. Oh yeah, there'd still be marijuana and cocaine...
A really neat story though! One person has an idea and is passionate and determined enough to bring it somewhere, and a whole group comes together and organizes. I think that's the way we need to be looking at Obama-- organizing as a people around issues like nationalizing health care, moratoriums on foreclosures, ending the war for real...
A couple days ago I achieved my goal of trying pomegranate juice. It wasn't half bad. Now I feel like it's my duty to cultivate a taste for it.
which, IMHO, is the best. I've tried many, and POM tastes the cleanest and has none of the extraneous ingredients that the other manufacturers add to cut costs. Of course, POM is expensive, but it's so dense and intense that you drink less of it. It's like really excellent chocolate.
For some reason, this morning, I was interested in what pomegranate trees look like. The blossoms are huge and scarlet red, and the fruit-laden tree is pretty cool looking too.
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http:/...
I certainly can't afford it these days. Maybe I'll go beg in front of my local grocery store for six bucks in change for a bottle...
Pomegranates are tough, showy, drought-tolerant shrubs. In the US, they are at their best in CA, AZ, parts of Texas and Nevada, where it is dry not extremely cold. Good container plant in colder areas too.
...but hey, actual pomegrates are on sale now, as they're in season, so who needs the juice? :)
the yard. Birds and squirrels ate more than we did.
Now that I'm in Miami, they are missed...
In the ancient and medieval worlds, pomegranates symbolyized birth and death, being itself capable of bleeding. It was frequently associated with maidens and maiden-goddesses.
In Greek mythology the story of Persephone concerns the abduction of the beautiful daughter of Demeter, goddess of harvest and fertility; Persephone’s tale is the reason behind the sweetness of spring and the bitterness of winter. When Persephone was kidnapped and taken to the underworld by Hades, the grim god of the underworld, she would only be released if she would eat from a pomegranate. By eating just a few seeds she would always be connected to Hades' realm. For a third of the year Persephone must stay in the underworld with Hades and the rest of the year she returns to her mother. When Demeter and her daughter are together, the earth flourishes with vegetation; but for the rest of each year, when Persephone returns to the underworld, the earth once again becomes a barren realm.
It was the fruit of Kore the Maid, or Persphone, who even as an underworld divinity was beautiful and kind. In Christian iconographic paintings, the Virgin Mary often holds Persephone's pomegranate, symbolizing Mary's authority over the death of her son, much as Athena in her dark or gorgon-like moods upheld a pomegranate in her left hand.
What a great story.
It's amazing how people are open to good advice, and people who aren't out to use them, eh, US government?
Legalization is the answer in America. Largest solution. Legalization, regulation, and taxation is the only answer.
Covert-ops are funded by the illegal drugs. The Drug, WAR business needs to end.
Just legalizing HEMP would be an awesome start.
I am pretty sure HEMP would grow there too.
Hemp oil can help replace petro, help clean the air, keep the forests growing, improve the mid-west economy, free up the prison system, create jobs, replace plastic, on and on and on.....
we are talking about opium, not hemp. or do you see the word drugs and think it's about weed?
He said legalizing hemp would be an awesome START to ending the black markets for drugs.
While legalizing harder drugs may seem radical to some, there's absolutely nothing radical about legalizing weed. Thus, START.
Wasn't there a scene in The Wizard of Oz where Dorothy et al were passing through a poppy field and getting oh so sleepy?
What were they doing with them?
And in mystery stories there are always secret poisons derived from the poppy.
Want to Win the War in Afghanistan? Forget Guns - Think Pomegranates.
Want to win the war? Not just is Afghanistan but how many other places?
Forget guns, I did that. Think Pomegranates, I did that too.
A knew product that could replace the poppy, Yes that's a great idea but the demand for poppy will out weigh a drink.
So, I came up with Legalization, it would move all the money into legal markets that could be regulated and taxed.
Am I confused or are you?
pot smoking, Professor
Hemp and Weed are cultivated for two entirely separate purposes. The confusion of the two closely related but different plants is how Marijuana was used as a scape-goat to criminalize the use of Industrial Hemp, much to the delight of the cotton and wood-pulp-paper industries. Read about the history of Hemp/Marijuana Prohibition in the USA. It will open your eyes.
For a look at U.S. government involvement with drug smuggling: www.madcowprods.com
Also, there's a great article in this week's Rolling Stone about the cartels are threatening Mexico's very stability, and how it won't be long before the cartels start shooting up the U.S. (In other news, AC/DC's old, short, still rocks.)
What an inspiring story! Not only should we convince farmers to trade poppies for pomegranates, but the US should be buying as much of the poppy crop as possible. There are many legitimate uses for opiates derived from poppies such as morphine and other pain killers used in our hospitals.
Afghanistan, if it is to survive and be peaceful, needs to have something to export to the world....Iraq has oil and a stable government is at least possible due to this resource, but Afghanistan has nothing and it should be in the world's interest to support Afghanistan through the importation of pomegranates and legal importation of poppies.
that is really cool.
...shall be won through promegranates.
I just love me some POM juice.
Kind of expensive though.
I particularly am intrigued by this part:
"because he was the first person who had ever come to them as just an ordinary man rather than a member of a foreign government or a military advisor"
It feels like there's some missing information there, because if others had proposed similar changes to the farmers that would have been positive for them, surely they would have done what was in their best interest.
The problem is, any representative of a POWER, foreign or other, is bound to be there to exploit you in some way. And his/hers proposal would reflect that. No?
I'm curious as to what the other proposals were.
In any case, this sounds like a good deal.
fighting free radicals on the cellular level so we don't have to fight them on the street level!!
a joke...NOT SPAM. Please laugh and move along.
ty
yw!
!
LDL
What's next? Health care for everyone? College education for all? Just kidding. For once it is nice to see a good idea and a government act on it. Quite refreshing.
that should be well-adapted to that area. Of course, other infrastructure will be needed to get fruit to processors, etc.
Certainly sounds like a viable alternative for helping the locals and lowering prices of a now rather pricey juice.
As another pointed out though, the military machinery complex will not go away quietly. They have a vested interest in keeping arms and ammo dumped there. Expect a fight.
THIS is a great use for the UN, IMHO.
Russians wiped them out
If I don't pick up at least a couple of pomegranites during the holiday season, I figure I haven't had a holiday season.
I'm sure Bush will order napalm on the fields on his way out.
Afghanistan is becoming Obama's pet project now, and Bush is leaving quietly... Watch Obama step up 'the War on People who disagree with the United States' Empirical Aspirations' (terrorists). And you people voted for him. Hahahaha!
Not only is there the hemp that makes you high (which is less harmful than alcohol) there are strains of the plant that wouldn't make you high if you smoked bales of it!! This hemp can be made into 1,000's of useful products, including clothing, paper, PLASTICS (we make 'em with OIL now) & even hemp ice cream (although that doesn't sound too tasty). The hempseed oil may even be able to replace gasoline in cars. Hemp grows well (kinda like a weed ;))& I think it would be a good replacement for the tobacco crop that is grown now.
P.S. I've never smoked a joint in my entire life.
hemp adds nitrogen back into the soil much like legumes (peas) do. This cuts the need for artificial petro-based fertilizers.
Hemp is a miracle crop.
i hope the next Ag. Sec. has read Louis Bromfield. We are going to need this man's ideas and work if we are to thrive.
It IS a miracle crop. Before the industrial production was shut down, we had ship's sails, shoes, and all kinds of things made from the fast-growing hemp plant. I'm too lazy to provide links, but the info is out there, and it's amazing stuff. Kinda funny that this came up...yesterday I bought some hemp granola. There's a market here that sells hempseed bread and some hemp textiles. The seeds are good food--lots of protein and essential fatty acids.
Mon, 11/10/2008 - 09:43 — shutterbug98
Not only is there the hemp that makes you high (which is less harmful than alcohol) there are strains of the plant that wouldn't make you high if you smoked bales of it!! This hemp can be made into 1,000's of useful products, including clothing, paper, PLASTICS (we make 'em with OIL now) & even hemp ice cream (although that doesn't sound too tasty). The hempseed oil may even be able to replace gasoline in cars. Hemp grows well (kinda like a weed...
___________________________________________________________________
Play on words?
What a great post. Over the last several years I have had the privilege of getting to know a young man who was from Afghanistan and was studying her in the states on a Fulbright. He is now back in Afghanistan with his wonderful wife four children and his very large family. He is also serving in President Karzai's cabinet.
When he was here in the states we spent hundreds of hours talking about his country, his family's situation, the Russian invasion and the situation in Afghanistan now. Each week (over the two year and some months period) he would talk with his family and they would tell him that the Taliban were regaining power and that the situation was getting much much worse. The Bush administration was doing very little to improve the situation. My friend was in Afghanistan when the Bush administration invaded and he said that things were better for about a year when the Taliban were on the run. But then the Bush administration took their eye off the situation and things got progressively worse. He also always emphasized how important it was to be inclusive of the less radical members of the Taliaban Not until the last year have we been hearing about Afghanistan again.
My friend would explain how Pomegrante, almond and grape orchards had been wiped out by the Russians during that war and how poppy production increased as these orchards were wiped out.
We would discuss how so much more attention needed to be given to subsidizing poppy farmers until they could replant these orchards that had been destroyed during the war with Russia. He also emphasized how poppy production could be used for legitimate medical use.
He is back there now working on some of these issues. The Afghani people have suffered so much, they deserve the help that they desire.
Well except for the fact that "winning" is the last thing in the world that the Military/Industial/Congressional Complex wants it sounds good.
that is what my friends father (retired Brigadier General in Afghanistan) kept asking. Why did the Bush administration back off when they first invaded?
the other thing my friend said was that the Afghanistan government had asked for proof that OBL had been involved in the attack on 9/11. No evidence or proof ever provided...because they don't have any.
but it would implicate elements in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Israel and the U.S. Many connections between drug smuggling and the 9/11 conspirators:
www.madcowprods.com
By the way in 1999 Afghanistan was NOT a major herion producer. It was only after the CIA got there that it became one again.
Exactly
I love pomegranate juice. Yes, it is expensive, but I dilute with a little soda water and ginger ale and it is amazing refreshing.
All the pictures I see on TV make Afghanistan look like Tatooine. It just seems like mile after mile of yellow-brown dirt with no vegetation.
Is it difficult to pomegranate?
A few drinks first wouldn't hoit.
One of these days Ima gonna mix pomegranate juice with vodka and see what it's like.
...is yummy! I've used the POM cherry, blueberry, and regular. I've also mixed POM with cranberry juice and vodka which is very delicious too. I like the POM tea mixtures too.
I wonder what a pomegranate mimosa would be like?
Everytime I see yet another story about some niave foriegner trying to replace the opium crop in Afghanistan, I gag. What's worse is all the people that pat this ignorant jerk on the head and tell him he has a good idea. Face it folks, this isn't the first time some former drug addict found his way into Afganistan and started to try and "do the right thing." He will fail, for reasons that are glaringly obvious.
First of all is the assumption that herion is "bad" and needs to be "replaced". This is a unique vision bred into us by the Drug Warriors who have been telling us to "Just Say NO" while locking up sick people for addictions. Opium is an invaluable pain medication that is highly sought after in legitamite markets worldwide. If this guy really wanted to help the Afghan people he would be trying to LEGALIZE the opium trade, not eradicate it. This isn't a noble cause folks. It's just a self-serving extention of this guys AA meetings. His crusade is a study in self-interest. Oh, but if he succeeds heroin will be even more scarce and more valuable. I bet the CIA reads stuff like this and laughs their heads off. Has he considered that? Nah...it would sound bad when he asks that charity for more funding.
Secondly...money. MONEY. Come on people, pomegranates versus heroin? Are you SERIOUS? Imagine someone told you to stop growing GOLD in your field and told you to grow APPLES instead, because apple juice is so delicious! HA.
As for the so called pledges of the local people? Lip service to a guy who wouldn't take no for an answer (and if you've ever had to deal with a crusading ex-addict you know they are a very pushy sort). I feel sorry for that guy he caught in the field. He was probably just trying to get a days work done, instead he was coerced into a photo op.
I'm sure the people of this region already know that the pomegranate project will only last until the money runs out, as I'm sure they also know this guy will fade away and in a few months, until some other starry-eyed white guy turns up and tells them they should grow...soy? bananas? hemp? Oh no not that last one...that's illegal.
...
Hope and cooperation is such a sham. Pushy former addicts are such a pain,and so annoying.Let's just give up and numb our brains with TV. I mean,it's really not worth the effort. Why try when we can just lie around ,get fat and lazy. Really now,who gives a shit,anyway. (sarcasim off) If everyone was such a cynic,we'd all still be living in caves.
I think Bellatrix makes some good points. Also Lemongrass' comment, that we'd have to make sure to actually purchase or pomegranate juice from Afghanistan.
Mon, 11/10/2008 - 10:36 — UncleDave
Hope and cooperation is such a sham. Pushy former addicts are such a pain,and so annoying.
Like boosh?
Poppy production could be rolled over into legitimate medical uses. Have you seen the price of organic pomegrante juice in health food stores?
has destroyed all hope.
Synthetic opiates are much stronger than the field grown stuff. I prefer Fentanyl to morphine (though I really love morphine, the drug and the band as well), and abhor Dilaudid and the OxyLimbaugh drugs.
Paregoric caused an intestinal blockage in me in 2002. Fact is, medical opium is cheap. You can get an eight ounce bottle of paregoric for about 5 dollars, and it gets you very -- um -- high.
And they aren't getting street drug prices for their shit. They are the first step in a long line of transport and refining and risk taking that increases the price of the illicit goods exponentially as it comes to the end of its travels, say coursing through the veins of some ill-person-who-is-treated-as-a-criminal type. It's the risk-taking part that adds the cost. The shit is easy to grow; I always have Papaver somniferum in my garden.
You obviously don't buy pomegranate juice. It costs about as much as Paregoric. Very expensive for juice.
And stop pissing on everyone's parade. It's galling. What you just railed on was mostly your opinion, and I assume you haven't been there to inspect the site. You haven't talked to anyone involved. You just read this article and got pissed off at a one-time no hoper trying to do something helpful and decent.
Unless you have a crystal ball, you have no idea how this will work out.
you just signed up to drop this turd in our punchbowl. I'll hazard a guess and say you don't have many friends.
It'll only work if people buy pomegranates from Afghanistan. As you can see from comments here, not many folks are bothering to find out where their produce comes from. If you drink Pom juice from the San Joaquin Valley, you won't be helping the situation at all.
Damn, and my landlord just planted a Pom tree on our property.
jesus and we only got mangoes for nukes from india! imagine if we could have peace for pommy granits!what a wonderful world it would be!
Isn't pomegranate what they make pom-poms out of?
And the larger lesson is: trying to "nation build" using the Pottery Barn rule, when your first and last thought is for your own national interest instead of the sovereign interests of the people concerned, is always going to fail. People aren't dumb.
What Bellatrix up-page is forgetting is that the local growers don't get much of a percentage of the Western price of the "gold" they're growing for someone else. If they've got a crop that pays *them* as much or more, they're quite capable of handling their own security too. Non-tribal warlords are a fairly recent import to the region and only the poppy-economy makes them any more viable than any other non-tribal local bosses have turned out to be in Afghanistan.
Regards, C
I get the feeling that bellatrix didn't bother to listen to the Radio NZ interview with James Brett. He makes it quite clear that farmers growing opium poppies see very little of the huge profit further up the production line. They will earn as much, if not more, from growing pomegranates as they would opium poppies.
Secondly, this is not a region where a lone farmer can decide to just grow whatever he wants - both because of the climate and growing conditions, and because family, village and tribal cooperation is vital for survival. That the village wanted in, and the tribal elders decided this was a good thing, and the entire province then made the collective decision to go for it is what will make this succeed.
And, yes. Brett is interested in making a go of his own business; he's not just there being a Pollyanna do-gooder. He needs pomegranates to make his juice, to sell his product to Sainbury's and Tesco's, to make enough profit to make a living and support his wife and two daughters... pretty much the same sort of motives that farmer in the field has as well.
So please, bellatrix, until it does fail and you can smugly claim you told us so, try not to piss on this man's parade, or those of the people in Afghanistan who aren't so different than you or I when it comes to wanting to make a living that doesn't necessarily have to be at the expense of someone else's health. This is a good thing, let's wish it all the luck in the world.
And I love pomegranates!
And for all the irony/linguistic fans out there, the root of the word "grenade" is the same as the one for "pomegranate", named so because the many bits of shrapnel inside a grenade were similar to the hundreds of seeds that make up a pomegranate.
It would be good to see one take the place of the other. :)
WE, the USA, could BUY the pomegranets and make juice or compost from them. Both would be winners.
Brilliant idea...but possible too simple for this complex world of ours. Have them grow something else that WE or the free world can buy, and they can make money...REAL money, and we can prevent opium from hitting the world market.
Holy Jesus...is this too much to ask? I'd drink a gallon of the juice a day myself if I thought it would help reduce the opium growers in the world change from growning poppies to growing a worthwhile product.
This reminds me of a news item on Afghanistan from a few years ago. It said the biggest effect the US was having on the country wasn't the billions given to the Mayor Of Kabul or any of his cronies (who were no doubt embezzling it).
Rather, the biggest positive effect was the discretionary money that colonels and others had to give out to locals - a few hundred to buy a new cow here (after it was killed), some money for a new roof there. By meeting the Afghans at a one to one level and making a positive difference, their efforts were being welcomed and talked about.
That is how you win hearts and minds. George Bush thinks winning hearts and minds means blowing up people with bombs and collecting the body parts.
pomegranates taste much better than guns.
Can we go ahead and give this guy a Nobel Prize now?
What a great story. Thanks, Nonny.
I have a friend who twice went to Afghanistan as a humanitarian aid worker - first during the civil war after the Soviets pulled out, and again just before and after the invasion of Afghanistan. It's like the 13th century with AK-47s.
My friend spoke of buying fresh pomegranates and fresh-squeezed pom juice in the marketplace. It will be great if they can turn this traditional crop into a viable alternative to opium.
I, too, have friends who spent a lot of time in Afghanistan, working with UNESCO to help bring back traditional businesses severely damaged by the war. They're rug sellers, it's their business, and yes, while they're interested in the humanitarian side of it, they're involved in a business. I am very proud to say I own a large prayer run made by child labour. I even have photos of the kids who made my rug, using traditional looms, wool, and natural dyes. They live in Herat, most of them orphans, anywhere from seven to fifteen years old, where half the day the boys learn reading, writing, maths and hygiene, and the other learning to weave traditional Afghani rugs, a skill they would have learned from fathers and brothers, now dead.
The ateliers my friends helped to set up were successful, so much so, that they almost had a riot in the village; so many woman had lost fathers, brothers, husbands, sons and were struggling to make a living in a country where women don't get out much, to say the least. The women saw these foreigners teaching only boys and taking away yet one more possible avenue for women's survival.
UNESCO sent in women teachers (since men couldn't teach women) and special ateliers had to be set up (since strict religious law in the area considered anywhere that more than three unrelated women congregated to be a brothel), and expanded its teaching.
Up until a few years ago, when the Taliban shut down the ateliers and the war made it impossible for my friends or UNESCO to reach these areas of Afghanistan, it was working, the business was thriving, and the village was making money and prospering. And my friends were selling some pretty fabulous rugs to people in Paris, which is where I bought mine, at a UNESCO fund-raiser.
War, and guns, solves nothing. Ever. Obama should put as much effort into promoting rug-making and pomegranate growing as he does sending in more troops and armaments. Because Chopvac above is right - people tend to support you more if you help them build a roof than if you drop a bomb on their house.
James Brett's idea is a strangely conservative one, y'know. Making money by helping other people make money.
Except somewhere down the line, the conservatives forgot half the equation involved.
Greg Mortenson of the Central Asia Institute is another "strange" foreigner who's done a lot of good on the private level, building schools one at a time.
That gave me the warm fuzzies...
Marijuana does that for me.
Hey, next time you hear from Michael Moore tell him they are drilling wells all over Afghanistan. My son is there with the Corps of Engineers drilling and showing the Afghanistan people how to drill their own. Don't think all the money is used to wage war. The vast majority is to help the people there. His budget, which comes from military funds, is 10 million this year alone.
They also brought in a National Guard unit from Missouri to help the farmers there find new crops instead of poppies. They've found that the new crops are far more profitable than the poppies were!
This week a dear friend of my daughters, and someone we as her parents cared deeply for died from a heroin overdose. His dreams and aspirations and talent is now gone. I can think of nothing more meaningful than to adopt a tree or two or three through this program. Timing is everything. Kismet, no?
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