Afghanistan is a traditional agrarian society, with rural Afghans wildlife, typical of each micro-ecosystem in the mountains they inhabit. Constituting well over 80% of the population live in rural areas before the Soviet invasion since 1979, agricultural products have decreased by 50%. To compensate for this loss, rural people have started to utilize the free and deregulated natural resources of their environment.

The end result of this process is loss of natural forests and smuggling of the wood outside the country. This process has also resulted in floods and avalanches, which have caused more devastation. Once forest productivity had declined or was monopolized by warlords, the poor farmers turned to cultivation of opium as an alternative.

The Afghan warlords also encouraged opium cultivation for the expanding international drug markets, resulting in further degradation of the land in previously very fertile parts of the country, particularly Helmand and Kandahar provinces.

Unfortunately, many forested areas were burned during the decades of war. Farmlands were also burned and degraded by heavy war machinery and chemical residues of 35,000 villages, 26,000 were destroyed and the rest were damaged.

This continuous process still takes its toll on the environment; like in 1999 the province of Parwan, the most fertile region close to the capital Kabul, witnessed mass burning of crops and mulberry trees and other so-called natural obstacles to war.

More than 300,000 inhabitants of this area were forceably evacuated from their residences while they were preparing for the autumn harvest. These kinds of war tactics are still common practice. For fighting purposes, all along the roads vegetation was cut to the ground and unprotected.

This may not seem too bad, but most highways in Afghanistan run along the narrow valleys that accommodate vegetation on their flanks in the form of narrow bands of trees and shrubs. In Nangarhar province, in the east, most of the land along the Kabul-Turkham highway that has been used as rice paddies prior to war was turned into wasteland.

In major urban centers such as Kabul, Herat and to a certain extent Kandahar and Mazar-e-Sharif, expansion of urban developments are constantly eating up the most fertile lands that once fed these cities. It is ironic that historically most of these cities were established because of the surrounding fertile land; here green fields are disappearing from view in the passage of each month and each day which is so regretful for all of us. Because we are going to lose the best part of our beauty in Afghanistan and that is Agriculture and forestry.

Moreover, the greatest environmental damage has been imposed on agricultural land in the Kabul region through elimination of the fertile farmlands of Deb-Sabz and Char-Dehi districts. These areas once provided fresh vegetables for the whole of Kabul metropolitan and its surroundings.

In the past 25 years, wetlands in the Kabul area have been drained. These ecosystems were always the most important factors in normalizing the dry climate and feeding the groundwater system of the region. At the same time, these drained lands were handed over to developers or to the most hazardous industrial developments, namely the animal skin and intestine processing mills that spew hundreds of tons of chemicals and biological agents right at the edges of the city every day.

This policy has changed the once beautiful wetlands of the southeast of Kabul city into the dirtiest chemical dumping grounds that holds enormous amounts of chemical and biological pollutants. The same area once held a small lake that was a resting ground for the graceful Siberian cranes on their annual migration to the Indian subcontinent, and a recreational hunting and fishing ground for Kabul residents.

Moreover, there are strong indications that, in the past 22 years, the population in Afghanistan has grown by as much as 15%. If all the rural refugees return, numerous problems of land ownership and adequacy of arable land will arise.

A contingency that requires thorough understanding of the ecosystems and land management practices in order to avoid further degradation of the existing land through overuse, but from historical records, we know that until 2000 years ago a large part of Afghanistan was covered with forest, and this fact is reflected in the great variety of species that still exist in the country.

However, the natural forest cover has been dramatically reduced over the years, and currently accounts for only about 3% of the total. Moreover, the distribution of the forest is uneven, and most of the remaining woodland is presently found only in mountainous regions in the southeast and south.

Afghanistan has one of the most interesting natural forests of pistachio nut in the world, located mainly in the savanna of the Badghis province, to the northwest of the country. Currently, no information is available on the status of this remote forest and the surrounding savanna that support the pistachio trees.

Reports in 1998 claimed that unknown merchants from neighboring countries were paying high sums for uprooting of these trees and for their roots. If true, this unethical practice will rob the poor inhabitants of the region of the economic benefits of this unique natural resource, while destroying the unique ecosystem.

Comparing the amounts of pistachio that have been exported from Afghanistan in recent years with that of pre-war amounts, one can estimate that more than 50% of this forest must have been lost in the past 22 years. This savanna forest if not preserved, could be lost forever with its hundreds of endemic animal and plant species on which the livelihood of thousands of families depends on.

Forests in Afghanistan occupy very fragile ecosystems and once lost, they may never be recovered. It is obvious that the economic benefits of clear-cutting have overwhelmed most of the beneficiaries of this illegal industries have resulted in cutting most of the accessible areas of the mountain forests to the extent that their restoration may take more than a century of hard and systematic effort, if possible at all.

In the north and southeast most of those sparsely distributed short trees and shrubs have been cut for firewood and the mountains have lost their vegetation cover. Over the years, this practice in high altitudes has increased the avalanches, killing many villagers; directly resulting from the cutting of the vegetation on the slopes. Flood occurrences due to deforestation have increased dramatically, resulting in further soil erosion and degradation of farmlands.

This is another serious problem that needs to be addressed by Afghan authorities with the help of the international development agencies so that the state of agriculture and forestry in Afghanistan can be returned back to provide adequate understanding of future developments of the rural Agriculture and forestry.