The soils of war

The real agenda behind agricultural reconstruction in Afghanistan and Iraq

GRAIN

In this Briefing, we look at how the US’s agricultural reconstruction work in Afghanistan and Iraq not only gives easy entry to US agribusiness and pushes neoliberal policies, something that has always been a primary function of US development assistance, but is also an intrinsic part of the US military campaign in these countries and the surrounding regions. Seen together with the growing clout that the US and its corporate allies exercise over donor agencies and global bodies – such as the World Bank, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) centres, which influence the food and farm policies adopted by the recipient countries – this is an alarming development. These are not unique cases born from unusual circumstances, but constitute a likely template for US activities overseas, as it continues to expand its “war on terror” and pursue US corporate interests.

Asia has seen its fair share of disasters in recent years, both man-made and natural – floods, cyclones, tsunamis, earthquakes, war. After each calamity, efforts are made to put the pieces back together. But “aid” from outside often comes with a political or even a military agenda that aims much more to refashion countries to satisfy powerful interests than actually to rebuild the affected communities. Humanitarian aid is regularly conditional on the adoption of neoliberal policies, and, perhaps more troubling, there has been a recent trend in the case of war to interweave this aid, classified as “reconstruction”, closely with the military machinery of the invading powers. In Afghanistan, where US President Obama is sending an additional 17,000 US troops, and Iraq, the testing grounds for this militarised aid, the distinction between the US’s civilian and military activities has been completely, and deliberately, blurred.

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