http://wwww.reliefweb.int/w/rwb.nsf/s/B ... 66007D53B6
Source: Canadian International Development Agency
Date: 26 Mar 2004
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Agriculture specialist Dr. Iqbal Kermali from Ottawa, Ontario, puts Afghanistan on the road to food self-sufficiency
In 2000 Dr. Iqbal Kermali crossed a river to go from Tajikistan to Afghanistan to start a new job. He brought seeds of hope to people who had almost given up. Today, he speaks proudly of a program that has helped 100,000 farmers in 180 villages move from their desperate need for food aid to increasing food self-sufficiency.
Dr. Kermali, a specialist in natural resource management with the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF), used the lessons learned from twenty years of AKF- and CIDA-supported projects in Pakistan to rebuild a sustainable agriculture system in Afghanistan.
"To me it was a challenge," he says. "Afghanistan was being ignored. I was working in biotechnology, but I felt something was missing. It alone wasn't going to solve the world's problems. This was a way of contributing back to my origins." Dr. Kermali, who was born in Kenya, came to Canada in 1985 to study at the University of Guelph.
"When we started working in Afghanistan, there were no government structures," he says. "We negotiated with each warlord and with each group, and gradually gained their trust and confidence."
"The priority at first was food. We provided wheat seeds and fertilizer to individual farmers. They paid us back in grain at harvest time. We put the money into a revolving fund to be used by village organizations for further development."
Last year, with nature's cooperation, there was a bumper crop: wheat yields increased 160 percent. Most of the districts are now out of the emergency phase.
"Food aid kept the people alive through the difficult years, and now we are helping Afghans improve their lives," says Dr. Kermali. "Incomes have risen, malnutrition is on its way out, and the survival rate of children is increasing. There's still a lot to do, but things are improving at a very fast rate. Afghanistan is not the same as it was two or three years ago