Small grant aids trekking in Afghanistan

Posted by Lindsay Griffin on 04/08/2011
Mountains of the Wakhan Corridor. Lindsay Griffin

As the number of climbing and trekking parties to Afghanistan's remote Wakhan Corridor continues to increase, there is news that the Linda Norgrove Foundation has contributed a grant to support a new trekking enterprise in the region.

The money has provided tents and trekking equipment to local guide Adab Shah, an excellent English speaker, who will hire it to trekking groups and then use the income to run English language courses for the Wakhan inhabitants during the winter months.

One of the main factors limiting tourism in this region is the lack of English-speaking guides; in 2010 demand outstripped availability by five to one.

To quote Shah, 'it is important that we help ourselves through business rather than through charity. If we get used to being given things, we will learn not to work'.

Norgrove, a Scottish aid worker who was 36 at the time of her death, had been working in Afghanistan since 2005. In September 2010 she was kidnapped with three Afghan colleagues by the Taliban in the eastern part of the country. She died two weeks later in a failed rescue attempt by a US special unit. An investigation concluded she had been accidentally killed by a grenade, thrown by a US soldier.

Posthumously, she was named as International Scotswoman of the Year, and received the 2011 Robert Burns Humanitarian Award and a 2011 United Nations Green Star Award.

The Foundation, set up by her parents with an initial sum of £100,000, aims to provide funding for women and children affected by the war in Afghanistan, particularly in education and healthcare. In 2009 Norgrove had trekked most of the Corridor with a group of friends and the area made a great impression on her.

The isolated Wakhan Corridor, the wedge of land in the north east of the country between Tajikistan and Pakistan, was never controlled by the Taliban and has remained a peaceful area.

The local population are very poor. They rely on subsistence farming and have more or less no opportunity to earn extra money. Tourism seems the only workable form of sustainable development, particularly given the now relative ease of access for foreigners from Tajikistan to the north.

David James, a former soldier who now runs MountainUnity, a social enterprise that attempts to provide jobs and hope to people of the Wakhan, notes that in 2010 trekkers and climbers contributed $118,000 to the local economy. This has already begun to change lives.

He also argues that as nearly all finance coming into the country goes to the violent areas, some should be directed towards keeping the Wakhan a safe haven. Counter insurgency in the south is making northern areas, such as Nuristan and Badakhshan less stable.

Recently, a healthy population of Snow Leopards, a threatened species throughout the mountains of Central Asia, has been discovered in the Wakhan by an American group, which has been working on the protection of wild life in this region since 2006.

The World Conservation Society has claimed it a wonderful discovery, showing there is 'real hope for the Snow Leopard in Afghanistan, providing we can ensure they have a secure future as part of Afghanistan's natural heritage'.
 



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