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QUETTA, Nov 6: Fruit from the Afghan oasis of Kandahar adorns ancient Persian manuscripts and was served to Iranian kings and the British colonial masters of India.
Today, fruit fills the pockets of Taliban fighters preparing for what they believe will be a guerilla war pitting their hardiness and knowledge of the rugged terrain against US troops equipped with the most modern arsenal in the world.
Since the United States started bombing Afghanistan last month, the quartermasters of the Taliban militia have bought hundreds, if not thousands, of tons of dried fruit for their troops, wholesalers say.
No one else is buying the raisins, figs and pomegranates.
“Business is badly affected. It’s not like it used to be,” Haji Abdul Rehman Shah, a Pakistani dry fruit commission broker, said.
“Everybody wants to prepare for jihad. They have no time for anything else and there are no buyers,” he said in his office in Munsaffi Road, the dry fruit wholesale market in Quetta.
Shah said he and his two brothers had 100 tons of raisins languishing in warehouses, and throughout the market the story was the same — war is not a good time for the fruit business.
Kandahar’s irrigated orchards have been famous for a thousand years and its traders carried the city’s produce as far as Delhi and Calcutta and deep into Iran.
Afghanistan expert and author Ahmed Rashid recounts in his book on the Taliban, published last year, that the Soviets razed trees around the city to give them a clear field of fire and mined orchards to hamper attacks by Mujahideen.
PRICES SLUMP: But prices have plunged since the airstrikes began.
Mohammad Kareem, an Afghan fruit trader from Kandahar, said he was earning half what he used to for the raisins he brings across to Quetta.
There is no problem with demand in Afghanistan itself, he and several fellow Kandahar traders sitting in Shah’s office added. The Taliban are buying up thousands of tons of dried fruit for their troops. The problem is the price.
From Quetta, the fruit of Kandahar is trucked to Pakistan’s large cities, to the Gulf states, to India and to Europe. At a rough guess, says Shah, Quetta’s 100-odd fruit brokers buy up around 20,000 tons a year.
Working out of a small, windowless office furnished with a desk and colourful floor rugs for visitors, he and his brothers fume at the United States.
They accuse Washington of turning Muslims against Christians by taking out its revenge for the Sept 11 attacks on poor, war-torn Afghanistan.
“America used to be good at trade with Muslims, but since (President George W.) Bush started this campaign against Muslims, the relations have stopped,” said Shah.
Kareem said fruit was one of Kandahar’s main money earners and many people were suffering because the market had dried up.
“People are angry. Most were not with the Taliban before. But now they are.” —Reuters
