KABUL: Afghanistan takes pride in its world-class pistachios, but with looters harvesting the nuts well before maturity fears are growing that the Taliban and local strongmen are depriving the war-battered country of much-needed export income.

Pistachios are not ripe for the picking until late July, but raiders rushed the forests earlier this month and, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, illegally harvested up to 40 per cent of the country's still-green crop.

In the northern province of Samangan, the offensive began on July 7 ─ the second day of Eid, the major celebration marking the end of Ramazan, says acting head of the provincial department of agriculture Rafiullah Roshanzada.

“Between 100 and 150 residents of the province stormed the pistachio forests in Hazrat Sultan and Koh Gogird,” he says, naming two districts in the province.

Security forces rushed to the scene and arrested many of them, he says, but the damage was done.

“The problem is that they were collected before ripe... the harvest has decreased,” he adds, citing figures that show provincial yield could be nearly halved in 2016 compared with last year.

Similar scenes are repeated all along the “pistachio belt” that runs from Badakhshan in northeast Afghanistan to Kunduz in the north and Herat in the west.

“Government forces have no authority over the pistachio forests in Badghis province, because they lie in Taliban-controlled areas,” says Hafizullah Benish, agriculture director in the western province.

The Taliban and local strongmen collected the crops from the roughly 27,000 hectares of land too early, he reports.

“I can tell you, these pistachios will not be sold because they are raw, not ripe.” If they had waited, Benish adds, the crop could have sold for an estimated 35 million Afghanis ($525,000).

“They are being collected by the Taliban and armed locals,” also laments head of the Badghis governor's office, Sharafuddin Madjeedi.

To stop the bleeding, the government has for the past several years banned access to the pistachio forests near harvest time in 11 provinces, says Mohammad Aman Amanyar, the forest supervisor for the Agriculture Ministry.

Defiance of the ban constitutes a “crime”, he says ─ but that is not enough of a deterrent, for among the militants and the strongmen are Afghanistan's desperately poor.

“Collecting pistachios from the forest is a golden opportunity for them and to save a bit of money for themselves,” says 32-year-old Shafi, an agricultural labourer in Samangan who uses only one name.

“If the government forces and powerful individuals do not stop the people, they can collect enough pistachios to make around 1,000 to 2,000 Afghanis ($15 to $30) every day,” he tells AFP ─ enough to feed a family for a week.

Pistachios to firewood

Amanyar disputes the idea of any economic benefit, however, arguing that Afghans are wildly undercutting the price of their own crop.

In Badghis province, he says, a “seer” (Central Asian unit equivalent to about seven kilos) of pistachios stolen while still green can sell for about 400 Afghanis, instead of the 1,500 to 2,000 Afghanis it can sell for when they are fully ripe.

“It's far too early,” he says.

Pistachios are targeted more than any other nut because they grow without cultivation in natural state forests, he says ─ unlike a cash crop like peanuts, which are better protected by their owners.

Nearly four decades ago, before the near continuous wars that have since ravaged Afghanistan, the country was carpeted with up to 450,000 hectares of pistachio forest, he says.

Now, after violence and misery, “40 to 50 pc of the trees are gone for firewood, or are victims of climate change and drought,” Amanyar reports.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and USAID, forest density across the country has considerably thinned, from an average of 40-100 trees per hectare before the war to 20-40 trees today.

For the past dozen years, efforts to green the country saw 9,700 hectares of pistachio replanted, says Amanyar.

Exports of the popular crop ranged from 500 to 1,500 tons of shelled nuts over the same time period, worth $4.2 million in 2014.

Not enough to compete with opium production that generates, according to the UN, about $160 million a year in Afghanistan.

But enough, for some, to make ends meet.