Afghanistan’s Rural Collapse Under Climate and Regime Change
In the mountains outside Jalalabad, I found myself climbing dry, broken slopes alongside village elders. Once, they told me, these mountains had been lush with vegetation, alive with traditional medicines and plants. Today, they stood bare and brittle. Water, once abundant, now barely trickled through plastic pipes snaking down to the villages — a desperate lifeline rigged together as the rains abandoned them.
I was travelling with the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization), visiting rural communities struggling to survive the twin blows of climate change and Afghanistan's political upheaval. A convoy of young Taliban foot soldiers escorted me, scouring the mountains and wetlands. They watched, curious but silent, their weapons hanging loosely as they too seemed to absorb the harsh new reality unfolding across their land.
In the village of Gula Ram, the story was the same. Where mountain streams had once gushed, now only thin veins of water ran through makeshift tubing, barely enough for drinking and washing. Entire ecosystems had collapsed. Without water, traditional medicines had disappeared. The mountains were no longer green. Life was retreating.
Further south in Sheendan Walibik, I walked across what should have been a thriving wetland — but it was a wasteland. Once, the rainy season would have brought thick grass to feed livestock. Now, for most of the year, the land lay cracked and barren, the bones of the earth exposed. Livestock starved. Villages shrank. It wasn’t always this way. Villagers told me the droughts only became severe in the last 10 to 30 years — a blink of an eye in a place that had endured for centuries.
And yet it wasn't only the climate tightening its grip. Regime change had torn open old wounds too.
In one village, former poppy farmers spoke bitterly of their loss. After taking power, the Taliban banned poppy farming outright — a move heavily criticised by Western voices who pointed to poppies’ crucial role in producing medical opiates. But speaking to locals who weren't farmers, a different truth emerged: an epidemic of addiction had hollowed out entire communities. Now, with poppies banned, farmers in remote areas with little access to healthcare or education faced a brutal choice — stay and starve, or flee with nothing.
In another corner of Jalalabad province, I met families once tied to a thriving dairy cooperative. The cooperative had once been the economic heart of the area — supplying milk to the republican government, the military, universities, and NGOs. It had sustained over 1,500 members, including 113 women. Today, it struggles to survive. With the Taliban’s takeover, contracts evaporated. Electricity became unreliable. Production plummeted from 7,000 litres a day to just 2,000. Families, desperate, began selling their cows — often to fund the dangerous journeys of sons sent overseas in search of work. Many never made it, returning home to a life even bleaker than before — no cows, no money, and no future to speak of.
In Elyaskhail, a village once alive with forests and wildlife, the land had been stripped bare. Deer and wolves had long since migrated. Trees were cut down for firewood, either to sell or to survive the brutal winters. Once-fertile fields now looked like abandoned battlegrounds. Some areas were prone to catastrophic floods; others to relentless droughts.
It seemed, in Afghanistan’s broken countryside, that nature had turned against them all. The villages I visited were fighting a losing battle, caught in a chokehold of climate disaster, political isolation, and economic collapse.
It wasn’t simply drought or Taliban rule that was hollowing out these communities. It was everything, all at once — relentless, cumulative, and unforgiving.
© Liz Loh-Taylor
