Dr Ikramul Haq & Engineer Arshad H Abbasi
Afghanistan has long been a theatre of war, geopolitics, and tragedy, but today a new danger eclipses even the guns: climate collapse. The East Afghan Montane Conifer Forests ecoregion, spanning some 20,128 square kilometres, once acted as the monsoon-harvestor of the Hindu Kush. Its dense canopies caught moisture, stabilized soils, and fed rivers that sustain both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Now, nearly 70% of those forests are gone. What remains is a scorched reminder of how human neglect, war, and greed can strip away nature’s defense against disaster. Unless bold steps are taken, Afghanistan’s collapse will not be political alone—it will be ecological, spilling instability across borders.
The destruction has not been an accident of nature. In the past decade, deforestation in Kunar, Nuristan, and Nangarhar has accelerated under the twin pressures of poverty and predation. Timber mafias, operating with impunity, smuggle ancient conifers into Pakistan, feeding luxury houses in Peshawar, Islamabad, and Lahore with carved doors and furniture made from deodar wood. These homes glow with the warm grain of Afghan forests, yet their beauty is soaked in tragedy.
Each polished plank represents the loss of trees that once shielded Afghan villages from floods and drought. The Taliban and militias have long profited from this black market, cutting deals with traffickers while stripping forests bare. Some conifers cut down were more than 1,500 years old, irreplaceable giants of the Hindu Kush, silent witnesses of Afghan history, erased in a few days of saw and axe.
The human cost has been catastrophic. Flash floods now sweep through Kunar and Laghman each summer, killing hundreds and destroying villages. Droughts, once generational, now recur every three to five years. This is no longer natural variability—it is climate collapse, accelerated by deforestation and compounded by rising global temperatures. One of us, Engineer AHA, once walked through this great treasure of nature and saw the devastation with his own eyes. What should have been a living shield of glaciers, rivers, and life had been stripped bare, its silence broken only by the echo of loss. The danger does not stop at Afghanistan’s borders.
The Kabul River Basin, which straddles Afghanistan and Pakistan, delivers more than 17.4 million acre-feet of water annually. These flows irrigate wheat, rice, and orchards on both sides of the border. Yet without forests to regulate snowmelt and monsoon rains, river regimes now swing violently between flood and drought. Farmers in Nangarhar and Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa already face ruined harvests. With Hindu Kush glaciers retreating at unprecedented rates, the long-term threat is existential: a water system collapsing at its source. Afghanistan’s ND-GAIN ranking—175 out of 181 countries in climate resilience—underscores its peril (Notre Dame Global Adaptation Initiative).
This is why the East Afghan Montane Conifer Forests must be declared a United Nations buffer state for 100 years. Much like the Kingdom of Judah once served as a buffer between the Egyptian and Neo-Babylonian empires, or how Thailand survived as a neutral space between British India and French Indochina, Afghanistan’s forests could serve as a buffer against climate chaos.
History is replete with such examples: Armenia as contested ground between Rome and Persia, Ryukyu as a buffer between Qing China and Japan, Mongolia as a buffer between Russia and China, and Afghanistan itself, long a buffer between the British and Russian empires. Each buffer preserved fragile balances that prevented wider collapse. Today, it is not empires but ecosystems that need such protection.
The proposal is bold but necessary: hand over stewardship of this 20,128 square kilometer forest to the UN, UNESCO, UNEP, and IUCN for one century. Under international protection, the zone could be reforested, monitored, and shielded from exploitation. The Taliban government, crippled by isolation and having dismantled the National Environmental Protection Agency, cannot achieve this alone. Only an international mandate can guarantee recovery.
The first and most urgent step is reforestation at scale. By restoring the lost conifers, Afghanistan can rebuild its vast carbon sinks that once stabilized the climate. Forests are not nostalgic beauty—they are scientific infrastructure. They harvest rainfall, regulate flows, and sustain agriculture. Equally critical is glacier preservation. The Hindu Kush glaciers are melting at alarming rates. Forests’ slow retreat regulates microclimates and shades frozen reservoirs. Without them, glaciers may vanish in decades; with them, they can endure for centuries.
Rebuilt forests will also provide flood control and soil stabilisation. Provinces like Kunar and Laghman, and Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, suffer annually from catastrophic floods. Forests bind soil, reduce runoff, and act as natural barriers against landslides. Their absence has left rivers violent and mountains barren. Restoring them is a disaster risk reduction strategy that will save thousands of lives. This is not a political statement; it is science and hydrology.
The very quantity and quality of Afghanistan’s great rivers—the Amu Darya, Helmand, Hari, Kabul, and Kunar—depend on the survival of the East Afghan Montane Conifer Forests ecoregion. Without these forests, snowmelt turns to floods, droughts grow harsher, glaciers retreat faster, and rivers that feed millions run dry or choke with silt. Protecting and restoring this fragile green spine is not just an environmental duty—it is the only safeguard for Afghanistan’s water, food security, and survival.. A thriving forest economy will reduce migration pressures.
According to the IOM, climate-driven displacement has uprooted over 1.2 million Afghans since 2012. Without restoration, millions more will flee into Pakistan and Iran, straining fragile cities. With fertile soils and dependable water, farmers can stay home, rebuilding their livelihoods with dignity. Migration has long been a desperate coping mechanism for rural families; restoring forests will restore stability, making displacement the exception rather than the rule.
There are also counter-extremism dividends. For decades, the illegal timber trade has financed militias and armed groups. By stripping forests of value, extremists enriched themselves while communities sank into poverty. International protection would sever this revenue pipeline. In its place, sustainable, community-driven forestry can emerge—anchored in stewardship, not exploitation. Forests could finance life, not war.
Taken together, these measures form more than an environmental plan—they form a blueprint for Afghanistan’s survival. By transforming the East Afghan Montane Conifer Forests into a UN–UNESCO buffer zone, Afghans would gain climate security, food security, economic stability, and peace dividends all at once. This is not charity, nor foreign imposition. It is the only best proposal in the best interest of the Afghan people. It ensures that future generations inherit not a wasteland of drought and floods, but a land where forests once again stand tall as guardians of water, climate, and life.
There is precedent. UNESCO biosphere reserves in the Nile and Mekong basins show how joint watershed management enhances cooperation and protects livelihoods. The Korean DMZ demonstrates how enforced absence of exploitation allows ecosystems to rebound. Afghanistan, once a buffer between great powers, must now host a different kind of buffer: one that shields nature, not empires.
The costs of inaction are written in blood. Every flash flood in Nuristan, every drought in Badghis, every Afghan child forced across the border is proof. As the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre notes, displacement has become “an inevitable feature of Afghan life.” But inevitability is a myth. By declaring the East Afghan Montane Conifer Forests a UN buffer state, the world can break this cycle.
Afghanistan’s survival depends on forests. Pakistan’s survival depends on the Afghan rivers. And the world’s credibility depends on whether it can act not after tragedy, but before it. The metaphor is stark: like the buffer states of antiquity, Afghanistan’s forests today must be recognized as a line of defence. Lose them, and collapse will spread. Preserve them, and both Afghanistan and Pakistan gain a chance to adapt. The United Nations must act. Its mandate would be simple yet revolutionary: halt deforestation, reforest 20,128 square kilometres within 20 years. A UN buffer zone does not erode sovereignty—it preserves the preconditions of sovereignty: water, food, and stability.
Afghanistan has been called the graveyard of empires. However, it need not become the graveyard of ecosystems. With courage, vision, and international stewardship, the East Afghan Montane Conifer Forests can become not a tomb but a seedbed—a living buffer where forests, rivers, and people endure together.
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Dr. Ikramul Haq, Advocate Supreme Court, Adjunct Faculty at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), member Advisory Board and Visiting Senior Fellow of Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE), holds LLD in tax laws. He was full-time journalist from 1979 to 1984 with Viewpoint and Dawn. He also served Civil Services of Pakistan from 1984 to 1996.
Engineer Arshad H. Abbasi, water and climate change expert, is co-founder of Energy Excellence Centres at NUST and UET Peshawar.