1. http://mrrd.gov.

af/en/news/roses-for-nangarhar-on-the-way-to-afghan-ownership

Roses for Nangarhar on the way to Afghan ownership

Publish Date: Jun 15, 2015 Category: General

Today, Germany and Afghanistan took the first step in transferring the Roses for Nangarhar
development project to an Afghan company, Afghan Roses Ltd. At todays ceremony in the Ministry of
Rural Rehabilitation & Development (MRRD), a memorandum of understanding was signed with the goal
of transferring the project from public to private Afghan ownership.

As one of Germanys most successful projects in its development cooperation with Afghanistan, Roses
for Nangarhar showed great potential in promoting exports of Afghan rose oil, keeping and creating jobs
and generating a legal income for the rural population.

As the German Embassy representative, Nicola A. Hofmann, said at the signing ceremony, Rose oil is
very valuable, a one-litre bottle is worth more than US$5000. As an export item, it is highly feasible and
demand is high. Todays ceremony marks the completion of a German-Afghan development project and
the start of an economically successful and socially responsible enterprise nurturing Afghan-German
trade relations.

Appreciating Germans cooperation with Afghanistan, Minister Nasir Ahmad Durrani, the Minister of Rural
Rehabilitation and Development said, This is a successful project that embodies the vision of the new
government support to agricultural production, development of private enterprise, commercial linkages
to the domestic and international markets, and an increase in income to the farmers working in the fields.

Roses for Nangarhar started in 2004 as part of a cooperation programme with the MRRD funded by the
European Union. Between 2009 and 2013 it received direct support from the German government, with
GIZ and Welthungerhilfe responsible for managing the project.

The aim was to provide former poppy farmers with an alternative to cultivating drugs illegally, in this case,
by growing roses. After processing the flowers into organic rose oil, the product can be sold on the
international market. Today, instead of opium poppies, 714 farmers grow roses for oil on 101 hectares of
farmland in the Nangarhar highlands.

The project is now at a stage where it can be transferred to private Afghan ownership. Following a strict
and transparent selection process, Afghan Rose Ltd. was chosen to take over the distilling factory outside
Jalalabad. Through sustainable processing and marketing of rose products, the company has the
possibility to grow in the future.
As the project showed, the market and industry for rose oil offers Afghanistan great opportunities. By
tapping the possibilities for exporting their goods, farmers can sustain their incomes legally. New jobs can
also be created, contributing to improvements in the lives of the rural population.

It is to be noted that representatives from Deutsche Gesellschaft fr Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ)

GmbH and Welthungerhilfe joined Minister Nasir Ahmad Durrani and other parties at the signing
ceremony.

2. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91118514

Promoting Perfume, Not Poppies, in Afghanistan

IVAN WATSON

Shafiq Azizi wades through the wreckage of a rose crop he planted in Nimla garden in the
mountains near Jalalabad, Afghanistan. Azizi planted the roses for the local villagers to grow
and then sell for the production of rose oil and water.

A single rose was all that was left of the flowers Azizi planted in Nimla garden.

Bottles of experimental fragrances sit in a broken window at the distillery of Azizi and
entrepreneur Abdullah Arsallah in Jalalabad.
Azizi looks at cedar oil coming out of his distillery. Despite many setbacks, Arsallah and Azizi
hope they will be producing essential oils next year.

Since the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan, poppy production has skyrocketed in the country.
The Afghan heroin industry is by far the largest in the world.

For the past several years, a group of Afghan and foreign businessmen has been trying to offer
an alternative, by urging farmers to grow flowers for perfume instead of for drugs. But it has
been a frustrating and costly project.

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.

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