Massive Logging in Afghan East

An IWPR radio reporter talks to people living along the fertile Nangarhar Canal in eastern Afghanistan, where illicit logging is destroying once-productive orchards. 

Fruit from the plantations used to provide Afghanistan with export revenues, but the former stocks of around two million trees are believed to have been reduced by half.

The reporter heard accounts of widespread complicity in the logging.

Fazil Ali Fazil is an IWPR-trained radio reporter in Afghanistan.

This report was produced as part of the Afghan Critical Mass Media Reporting in Uruzgan and Nangarhar project, and is also published on the Afghan Centre for Investigative Journalism website which IWPR has set up locally.