( 香水工場の )
香る生活
ケシからバラへ #2
「アフガニスタン復興への険しい道のり、ケシからバラへ」の後半です。アフガニスタンの人々は、高価な香水産業用ローズオイルでドラッグ産業を乗り越えられたのか、結果はまだでていません。さっそく内容を見てみましょう。
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アジジさんは香料蒸留所で働いています。畑に出ないときはジャララバードの暑くて埃っぽい駐車場で蒸留作業に励みます。
スギなどの木材の蒸留で得た精油は国際市場でガロンあたり数千ドルで売れます。ニューヨーク州立大学のアフガンのエキスパート、バーネット・ルービン氏の説明します。
「この作業はヘロインの精製に似ています。花を栽培し、比較的簡易な装置で極めて高価な産物を産出する行程は同じですが、香料精製は完全に合法的です」ルービン氏は、アジジさんを雇うグレスタン社の創業者の一人でもあり、グレスタン社はもともとケシ栽培の代替農作物をアフガンの農家に提供したいという意図で始められた会社です。しかし、困難も少なくありません。
「なぜ現地の人がポピー栽培に走るのか、少しやってみればわかりますが、よく理解できます」
すでに29,000ドルの支援金がバラの苗木購入と蒸留所建設に投資されましたが、蒸留施設はほとんど使用されず、バラ畑は荒れ放題です。前金やキャッシュで支払われるケシ栽培を止めて、先行き不透明なバラ栽培やローズオイルビジネスに移行したいという物好きな農民は多くありません。
また役人の腐敗や汚職、非効率的な行政組織も事業を困難たらしめています。グレスタン社には毎年400ドルの税金が課せられていますが、支払いの度に税務署担当官から賄賂を要求されます。また、ある時はバラ収穫時の一番大切な時期に政府の役人によって数週間操業を停止させられたこともあります。致命的です。
ルービン氏たちは、やむえずグレスタン社の売却を計画しています。しかし、現地の起業家でグレスタン社の香水事業を再興させようとする人間も現れており希望は残されています。
「ドラッグビジネスに墜ちるのは簡単なこと、しかし、そんなことをしていても何の解決にもなりません。麻薬産業は私たちが、断固断ち切るべき悪のサイクルなのです」
「ポピーや他のドラッグビジネスから生まれる麻薬に代わって、アフガニスタンが、果物や野菜やよい香りの芳香産物・芳香植物を世界に供給していくことが私たちの夢です」と彼らは語ります。
---------------QUOTE--------------
Shafiq Azizi is a perfume distiller. When he isn't picking flowers in Nimla garden, a green oasis in the dry hills of eastern Afghanistan, he works in a hot, dusty parking lot in the city of Jalalabad. He darts between a network of steel pipes and drums, dumping fragrant ingredients such as cedar wood into a giant metal vat.
By boiling the ingredients, Azizi extracts valuable oils, which can be sold on the international market for thousands of dollars per gallon.
Barnett Rubin, an Afghanistan expert at New York University, says the process is similar in a way to the production of heroin.
"You grow flowers, then you refine it using relatively simple technology into something that has very high value per volume and then export it to the market --- only it's completely legal," says Rubin, who is also one of the founders of the Gulestan Company, which employed Azizi for the last three years.
Rubin says he and his partners hoped to offer Afghan farmers an alternative to growing poppies. Instead, they have encountered daunting obstacles.
"After my experience trying to start a legal taxpaying company in Afghanistan, I understand very well why people prefer to go into illegal businesses," he says.
Two years ago, Azizi used $29,000 in U.S. aid money to plant thousands of roses and build a perfume-distilling machine for the villagers living near Nimla garden.
But when Azizi visited last week, he found the distillery untouched and the rose patch abandoned.
Many Afghan farmers are reluctant to switch to a new cash crop because they are accustomed to being paid upfront to grow poppies for opium traders.
Rubin says corrupt and inefficient Afghan government bureaucracy also created big problems for Gulestan.
For instance, he says the company owed a $400 tax.
"We kept trying to pay this tax, and every time we did, the officials in the local treasury department would ask us for bribes," he says.
The company faced a litany of other obstacles. At one point government officials refused to allow Gulestan employees to operate their distillery for weeks, forcing them to miss a crucial flower harvest.
Gulestan's owners now say they plan to liquidate the company. But there is still hope for Afghan perfume. A local entrepreneur named Abdullah Arsallah is determined to resurrect Gulestan as a new company that makes fragrances.
"It's very easy to get into the drug business, but ... that will not get us anywhere," Arsallah says. "It's a cycle that one has to break."
Arsallah says he will move Azizi and his distillery to a nearby village, where a farmer named Haji Ibrahim says he is enthusiastic about the new venture.
Instead of supplying people around the world with poison from poppy and other drugs, Ibrahim says it is his hope that Afghanistan can give them sweet fruits, vegetables and nice smells.
---------------QUOTE-------------- (2008-06-08)
-------------------------------
アジジさんは香料蒸留所で働いています。畑に出ないときはジャララバードの暑くて埃っぽい駐車場で蒸留作業に励みます。
スギなどの木材の蒸留で得た精油は国際市場でガロンあたり数千ドルで売れます。ニューヨーク州立大学のアフガンのエキスパート、バーネット・ルービン氏の説明します。
「この作業はヘロインの精製に似ています。花を栽培し、比較的簡易な装置で極めて高価な産物を産出する行程は同じですが、香料精製は完全に合法的です」ルービン氏は、アジジさんを雇うグレスタン社の創業者の一人でもあり、グレスタン社はもともとケシ栽培の代替農作物をアフガンの農家に提供したいという意図で始められた会社です。しかし、困難も少なくありません。
「なぜ現地の人がポピー栽培に走るのか、少しやってみればわかりますが、よく理解できます」
すでに29,000ドルの支援金がバラの苗木購入と蒸留所建設に投資されましたが、蒸留施設はほとんど使用されず、バラ畑は荒れ放題です。前金やキャッシュで支払われるケシ栽培を止めて、先行き不透明なバラ栽培やローズオイルビジネスに移行したいという物好きな農民は多くありません。
また役人の腐敗や汚職、非効率的な行政組織も事業を困難たらしめています。グレスタン社には毎年400ドルの税金が課せられていますが、支払いの度に税務署担当官から賄賂を要求されます。また、ある時はバラ収穫時の一番大切な時期に政府の役人によって数週間操業を停止させられたこともあります。致命的です。
ルービン氏たちは、やむえずグレスタン社の売却を計画しています。しかし、現地の起業家でグレスタン社の香水事業を再興させようとする人間も現れており希望は残されています。
「ドラッグビジネスに墜ちるのは簡単なこと、しかし、そんなことをしていても何の解決にもなりません。麻薬産業は私たちが、断固断ち切るべき悪のサイクルなのです」
「ポピーや他のドラッグビジネスから生まれる麻薬に代わって、アフガニスタンが、果物や野菜やよい香りの芳香産物・芳香植物を世界に供給していくことが私たちの夢です」と彼らは語ります。
---------------QUOTE--------------
Shafiq Azizi is a perfume distiller. When he isn't picking flowers in Nimla garden, a green oasis in the dry hills of eastern Afghanistan, he works in a hot, dusty parking lot in the city of Jalalabad. He darts between a network of steel pipes and drums, dumping fragrant ingredients such as cedar wood into a giant metal vat.
By boiling the ingredients, Azizi extracts valuable oils, which can be sold on the international market for thousands of dollars per gallon.
Barnett Rubin, an Afghanistan expert at New York University, says the process is similar in a way to the production of heroin.
"You grow flowers, then you refine it using relatively simple technology into something that has very high value per volume and then export it to the market --- only it's completely legal," says Rubin, who is also one of the founders of the Gulestan Company, which employed Azizi for the last three years.
Rubin says he and his partners hoped to offer Afghan farmers an alternative to growing poppies. Instead, they have encountered daunting obstacles.
"After my experience trying to start a legal taxpaying company in Afghanistan, I understand very well why people prefer to go into illegal businesses," he says.
Two years ago, Azizi used $29,000 in U.S. aid money to plant thousands of roses and build a perfume-distilling machine for the villagers living near Nimla garden.
But when Azizi visited last week, he found the distillery untouched and the rose patch abandoned.
Many Afghan farmers are reluctant to switch to a new cash crop because they are accustomed to being paid upfront to grow poppies for opium traders.
Rubin says corrupt and inefficient Afghan government bureaucracy also created big problems for Gulestan.
For instance, he says the company owed a $400 tax.
"We kept trying to pay this tax, and every time we did, the officials in the local treasury department would ask us for bribes," he says.
The company faced a litany of other obstacles. At one point government officials refused to allow Gulestan employees to operate their distillery for weeks, forcing them to miss a crucial flower harvest.
Gulestan's owners now say they plan to liquidate the company. But there is still hope for Afghan perfume. A local entrepreneur named Abdullah Arsallah is determined to resurrect Gulestan as a new company that makes fragrances.
"It's very easy to get into the drug business, but ... that will not get us anywhere," Arsallah says. "It's a cycle that one has to break."
Arsallah says he will move Azizi and his distillery to a nearby village, where a farmer named Haji Ibrahim says he is enthusiastic about the new venture.
Instead of supplying people around the world with poison from poppy and other drugs, Ibrahim says it is his hope that Afghanistan can give them sweet fruits, vegetables and nice smells.
---------------QUOTE-------------- (2008-06-08)
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