Effort to Revive Ancient Date Industry Holds Promise for Nation's Economy
By Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
BAQUBAH, Iraq -- Inside the festival hall, on long tables covered with white cloth, Aboud Ahdim Abbas Mohammad saw a glimpse of the future: baskets filled with different kinds of ripe, delicious dates. They held the twin promise of reviving an ancient industry and Iraq's devastated economy.
But once outside, Mohammad wondered whether Iraq would ever realize such aspirations. Violence had emptied nearby villages filled with date farmers. His cousins had been slain on the way to sell their harvest. Gunmen had recently ambushed him. He shot his way out to safety, but not before a bullet rammed into his left arm.
"They don't want a new Iraq based on freedom and a country that produces," said Mohammad, 56, who looked regal with bronzed skin, a pepper gray moustache and a white and black checkered tribal head scarf.
Across a volatile landscape brimming with militias and insurgents, farmers like Mohammad are trying to restore the glory days when Iraq produced about 30 percent of the world's supply of dates. The fruit has been a symbol of daily life since the time of the civilizations of Babylon and Sumer, more than 5,000 years ago.
In the calculus of preventing Iraq's slide toward civil war, reconstructing Iraq's economy is a top priority. And dates are Iraq's second-biggest export, after oil. Revitalizing the industry could help reduce sectarian tensions by creating thousands of jobs while generating revenue to rebuild Iraq, improve security and lessen the country's dependence on U.S. reconstruction dollars.
Now, after years of neglect, war and sanctions, the date industry is showing signs of recovery, partly through U.S. efforts. Farmers are being introduced to market-oriented capitalism after years of depending on state subsidies under the government of Saddam Hussein.
In May, helicopters contracted by the U.S. military sprayed thousands of acres of date palm trees across Iraq with pesticides to eradicate insects that had caused major damage. After the 2003 invasion, security concerns prevented large-scale aerial spraying, Iraq's small crop-dusting helicopter fleet was destroyed, and looters stole pesticides from the Agricultural Ministry warehouses.
On Monday, the fruits of the spraying campaign were displayed at a date festival in Baqubah, an insurgent stronghold 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. In a high-ceilinged, brightly lit room, farmers proudly showcased more than 60 varieties of dates in baskets made from palm fronds. Outside, dignitaries sat under a tan tent, eating dates and plain yogurt.
This year the date harvest in Iraq's Diyala province -- Baqubah is its capital -- is expected to be about 70,000 tons -- "50 percent better than last year," said Abbas al-Tamimi, the provincial director general of agriculture. Sold below production cost under Hussein, dates are now sold competitively in local markets and exported to neighboring Jordan and Dubai, he said.
Yet tight security cast a shadow over the date festival. Eight U.S. Humvees were parked outside, as Iraqi security forces guarded the street. There were empty seats in the tent. A sudden burst of gunfire outside the compound prompted heavily armed U.S. soldiers to run out, poised for action. It was not an attack.
Attacks in Diyala have surged, from about 200 each month before the February bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra to just under 500 this summer, according to U.S. military statistics. The province is especially vulnerable to sectarian violence, given its mix of Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish populations. In recent weeks, there have been assassinations of leaders, kidnappings and mosque bombings.
Tamimi, dressed in a blue suit and yellow tie, said date farmers who populated several villages were forced to leave "because of sectarian tensions."
"Some of them were threatened by terrorists and had to leave," he said.
Khalid al-Sanjary, the mayor of Baqubah, said 40 families had recently been driven out of their villages by the violence.
In his address to the guests, Tamimi made an impassioned plea for calm. "This is a cancer for the farmers," he said. "We don't want the farmers to leave. We want peace in our country."
Seated in the audience was Abu Alla, a member of the local agricultural chamber. For him, the violence was not the only concern. He said the harvest is much less than prewar yields. "It should be twice as much," he said.
"There's no actual support once we treated the dates with planes," added Abu Alla, who asked that his full name not be used. "But our palms are sick and they need further treatment. All agriculture in Iraq needs equipment and treatment. We have the experience but we have lack of equipment."
More than two decades ago, Iraq, known as the "land of the palms," had 30 million trees, more than anywhere else in the world. But the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s and Hussein's campaign to destroy Shiite marshes and farmland cut the number of palm trees in half. U.N. sanctions imposed in the 1990s further slashed exports. Iraq once supplied the world market with 600,000 tons of dates a year. Today, it produces an estimated 250,000 tons.
For Abu Alla, reviving the date palm industry has religious significance. The palm tree is mentioned 21 times in Islam's holy book, the Koran. Muslims eat dates to break fasts during the holy month of Ramadan. "Our dates are very sacred. They are blessed. They are a symbol. They are a part of Islam," he said.
U.S. Army Maj. Marcus Snow, a member of the State Department Provincial Reconstruction Team in Diyala, is a stockbroker from Lancaster, Pa., who has worked with the date farmers since May. "This place could have fed the Middle East," he said with enthusiasm. "The soil is fantastic. They have so much potential, it kills me. This is, literally, the Garden of Eden."
Tapping that potential, he said, will require more action than simply growing dates. The farmers need to adopt better accounting, production and marketing practices and to use better packaging and transportation systems, he said. For starters, they need to process their dates in Baqubah, he said. Unprocessed dates are sold to Dubai for $300 a ton, he said. Processed dates could yield $3,000 a ton.
Before the invasion, there were several processing plants in Baqubah. But the owners fled the violence. Snow said he has approached some of them to come back and reopen their plants. No luck.
"They know they can make more money investing elsewhere than here," Snow said. "They are bait for kidnappers. They want to play it safe."
Mohammad, whose family has grown dates here since the 18th century, has no plans to flee, despite the attempt on his life. He predicts his harvest this year will be 70 percent more than last year, although that's still a third less than what he produced in 2000.
He can only imagine how it would be if there were peace.
"If the situation was better, I would have a very beautiful garden," Mohammad said, with a smile.
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