Afghanistan is going through a demographic revolution. The country's population is fast growing. Such a rapid increase in Afghanistan's population is unprecedented. Never in the long history of this country have the waves of demographic change been so intense. Afghanistan's population is set to leapfrog to more than 45 million by the year 2025. By 2050, it will grow to more than 70 million. Even a 50% increase to 45 million is enough to exert tremendous pressure on the country's meager resources.
The situation will be quick in escalating into a crisis phase where the pressure on natural resources such as land, water, agricultural produce, civic utilities and facilities will be massive. While Afghanistan's capacity to provide for even the existing level of population is shaky and impossible without billions of dollars in foreign aid, it is difficult to see how Afghanistan will be able to provide for an additional 50 of population only 13 years from now.
If this looming challenge is not handled well, the fate that would befall Afghanistan is what happened to the India and Pakistan in the Subcontinent and to many south Asian countries where rapid population growth and economic under-development, within decades, ensured that a vast majority of these countries' populations remained poor for decades and even centuries.
Afghanistan's population explosion is a grim reality and if not managed prudently, it would spell disaster for a country that continues to be dependent on international aid and assistance for many more years even beyond 2014. The Ministry of Public Health of Afghanistan has voiced deep concerns about the unchecked growth in Afghanistan's population.
It says this population explosion has compelled them to incorporate family planning and birth control into the ministry's 5-year strategic plan. The Ministry of Public Health has been implementing such programs in partnership with the World Health Organization for a long time now although these programs have not been executed on a scale large enough to have any strategic influence in the medium to long term.
In the past three decades and prior to the onset of the current political dispensation, owing to the continued situation of conflict and instability, the health and maternity indicators in Afghanistan have been languishing at the bottom of international rankings. Mother and child mortality rates were always high and this was a significant reason for the considerably low rates of population growth in Afghanistan.
This situation continued under the Taliban and even worsened as during that era, the infrastructures of public health collapsed and there was little left of a functioning public administration system that can ensure a measure of public health. But the silver lining of the era of civil war in Afghanistan was exactly this: a moderate growth in population prevented a steeper decline in the standards of living in Afghanistan and for its people. However, the case might be different from now on when the improvements in public health and standards of living are fueling a vicious growth in population that if left unchecked can prove disastrous for this country.
Afghanistan's challenge, thus, is how to manage and moderate this unchecked growth in population. It would take a holistic approach by the country's public administrators and health policy makers to avoid its disastrous consequences that will start to manifest themselves only a few years from now.
The worrying matter here is that meeting this looming disaster will not be possible only thorough implementing comprehensive and large scale family planning and birth management programs. While these programs should form one track of the overall strategy, on the other hand, the capacity of Afghanistan to better provide for its citizens should drastically improve.
Unless Afghanistan's shaky economic development is given a major push and is taken to a sustainable trajectory, the fate that would await Afghanistan would be one that has happened to other countries in the Subcontinent and the south Asian region. Now the option in front of Afghanistan is only one. Whether to act proactively and to sidestep a looming disaster, hunger, disease and malnutrition for the majority of its population only two decades from now or to be catapulted into this abyss in which other similar countries have been languishing for decades now.
Therefore, it is pertinent for Afghanistan to take a lesson or two from the experience of similar countries such as Pakistan, India and other south and south eastern countries. Iran to the west of Afghanistan stands as a prominent example of how prudent family planning programs implemented on a national scale can prove very effective in managing population explosion as a reality of developing countries. In the 1980s and 1990s, Iran implemented a rigorous national family planning awareness program.
Today, it is witnessing the fruits of success with the country's population growth becoming stabilized and far manageable than it was merely 15 years ago. The experience of Iran in this regard can be helpful for an Afghanistan that desperately needs outside assistance and expertise in managing its public health challenges.
Equally important is to provide for economic development. Even if the government of Afghanistan manages to implement large-scale family planning programs over the coming decade, still the increase in the population of the country would be significant. The young generation that is coming up will need jobs and employment a few years from now and for Afghanistan to be able to provide for them, there should be increasing economic opportunities.
Will Afghanistan's imminent population explosion spell disaster for this country? Going by the track record of the government of Afghanistan and the fact that the country remains unstable and in a conflict situation, it is difficult to see how Afghanistan would be able to avoid the disaster. In this strong likelihood, poverty, disease, malnutrition and destitution will trap even a larger segment of Afghan population both relatively and in absolute numbers. Meeting this challenge should be incorporated into the national development plans.
The president of the country needs to create a special task force or a commission on a priority basis to exclusively work on this issue and take the responsibility for coordinating the national level policies in this regard.