By Erja-Outi Heino in Sughd
The Red Cross Red Crescent food distributions
in drought-stricken Tajikistan will be finished by the end of this month.
As the last flour sacks are being handed out, people are already busy harvesting
this year's wheat crops. But with an exceptionally hot and dry spring,
the harvest is likely to remain poor and Tajikistan may be facing yet another
year of drought.
By the end of June, the Red Cross Red Crescent will have distributed emergency food for almost 130,000 people targeted in the International Federation's drought appeal both in the northern and southern parts of Tajikistan. In the south, the Tajikistan Red Crescent distributed food provided by the World Food Programme (WFP). The relief operation in the north was supported by other donors, including ECHO, the Swedish Government as well as several sister Red Cross Red Crescent Societies.
In northern Matcha district Husein Tsehov rubs an ear of wheat in his hands. Ideally, some 70-100 kernels should fall into his palm. But the ear is ominously light. Tsehov blows the dry husk away and counts the outcome: 15 kernels, at the most. Tsehov works for the local government. He expresses his fear of what the forthcoming harvest will be like: only in fields with sufficient irrigation has the wheat grown normally, elsewhere it is depressingly low.
Cotton, a major export good for Tajikistan is not doing that well either. At a close-by cotton field, workers of the Hoziamirov collective farm are desperately fighting to save wilted cotton plants. There were only a few drops of rain during the whole month of May, and the crops did not get any irrigation until the first week of June. Dilshod Dustov, a collective farm worker, channels muddy water for the plants with a hoe - from a sense of duty rather than any optimism about the results.
"It is too late already. Our cotton harvest will fail," he predicts.
Dustov has had to work manually in the cotton fields for two years now. Prior to that, he worked the fields with a tractor but after all the machinery broke down, Dustov resorted to a hoe. His wife works for the same collective farm. They have no land of their own, so their family of five depends completely on the cotton crops and what they yield . In a good year, the collective farm pays its workers with food. But what happens in a bad year? Dustov shrugs his shoulders; last year the international organizations came to people's rescue.
While Dustov is working the land, many of his colleagues are lining up for food distribution at the Red Crescent Society of Tajikistan (RCST) centre in Matcha. By the afternoon, the air is boiling hot and people seek the shade wherever it can be found.ere
"The weather is one month ahead of the calendar. April came already in March and now it feels like July," people sigh in the queue .
There are many elderly waiting for food at the Matcha distribution point. Oiviko Oiva, 75 years old, looks as if she could be knocked over by a feather. But the old lady is tough. Together with a 12-year old helper, she heaves 100 kilos of wheat flour on a wheelbarrow. The boy pushes the wheelbarrow; Oiva herself grabs a bag with 8 liters of sunflower oil and starts walking homeward in her loose rubber-boots.
"My husband is at home waiting for me and the food. He is 81 years old and too weak to come all the way here. Our four children left home long time ago," she says.
The wheat flour and oil lasted most families between four and eight weeks - depending on their size and living conditions. The winter months were the hardest. With the arrival of spring, people have been able to grow some vegetables and the families have more to get by with than bread and tea.
"We were definitely able to alleviate people's suffering. In a way, it is as if we were handing out aspirin: we are treating the symptoms but the disease prevails. It is not just the drought but also a deteriotating infrastructure combined with poor water management", Red Cross logistics delegate John Punter points out.
Punter has worked in Tajikistan for three years, but last winter he witnessed much more desperation among the population. With the gradual decay of the infrastructure, the situation of the poor has grown irrevocably worse.
Most people visited by the Red Crescent hope to receive more food and seeds this year. Last month, the President of Tajikistan, Emomali Rahmonov, appealed to the international community for further humanitarian aid. According to the president, this year's harvest will be even worse than that of last summer. Two consecutive years of severe drought will hit the population even harder.
In northern Ghonchi district, Mujuam community, a public official echoes the president's concern: "The food distributions were a great relief to my community. Ninety per cent of our fields are rain-fed and therefore we got hardly any wheat last year. Without the food aid, people wouldn't have had bread all winter. This year the situation is equally bad because there was hardly any rain. I don't know what will become of our life."