Arghand Survival
My heart rose into my throat as I read the latest notes from the field, penned by Arghand Cooperative’s Jennie Green after her recent trip to Afghanistan. The challenges Arghand has faced in the last few months have nearly undone a venture that I support and respect.
I want to do more to support them. So, Arghand soap will be featured with a discount from Friday, November 27th through Thursday, December 24th. I’ll take for a little less to make your holiday shopping more affordable in the hope that you will buy a little more of their wonderful product.
Arghand has always had it’s share of challenges, but not as overwhelming as the ones they have just worked through.
The Canadians had recently withdrawn their consent to ship Arghand products through their APO. As Jennie prepared to go to Kandahar to help find a way to ship out a backlog of supply, three men in the cooperative confronted Sarah Chayes, the founder, about deteriorating safety in Kandahar. Since the corrupt election in August, resurgence of the Taliban (who are now blending with the local populace), and renewed violence, they had decided the danger of working for Arghand had become too great.
As always, the Taliban had it in for those Afghans who were known to collaborate with foreigners, or worked for the government, and the daily reports of murders kidnappings, suicide attacks and bomb blasts became especially worrisome when the victims started to be neighbors and friends – Jennie Green
They wanted to dissolve the cooperative and distribute the assets evenly among the members, so that they could take their nest eggs and begin again, perhaps in a safer places, even Pakistan.
After many days of painful discussion, Sarah and Jennie convinced the three men to stay on at the cooperative as they put it into “survival mode.” For six months the cooperative will be operating at reduced capacity as they attempt to remain under the radar and hope for the situation to improve.
We have a growing history with Arghand since we started carrying their soap in the fall of 2007. You’ve helped us provide income for them as we continue to reorder. More than a dozen Afghans, mostly women, are supported, at least in part, by Arghand.
Jennie assures me there is plenty of supply for the holidays, thanks to the backlog that had built up before shipping resumed. We just got another box with all of their soap varieties and more pebbles are on the way.
We badly want to succeed. We don’t want to surrender our years of hard work to a sinister enterprise. – Jennie Green
They have not surrendered. As long as Arghand survives, I know there is hope for the Afghans.
Keep shopping your good values.