The Cambridge Society Cumbria invites alumni and their guests to an illustrated talk by Anthony Fitzherbert on his work with Afghan villagers, for the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the UN and other UN and Aid/Development Agencies, which has taken him to every corner of rural Afghanistan. He has unique knowledge of working, traveling and living in all parts of the country through many years of warfare and tension. He has penetrated Afghan life at a level that few outsiders have ever reached- particularly focusing on rural development, on natural resource management and on all matters of agriculture and husbandry, including the vexed question of poppy production.

During the later years of the Soviet occupation, as the desk officer for Afghanistan in FAO’s HQ in Rome, he visited the country a number of times and as the USSR forces were departing, crossed the frontier from Pakistan traveling as the guest of different mujahideen groups to assess the damage wrought by ten years of conflict. Between 1989 and 1995 he managed the FAO’s Afghan agricultural rehabilitation programme in the field. Although based in Pakistan because of continuing civil war in Afghanistan, this work involved extensive travel within Afghanistan on all sides of the shifting lines of conflict.

Since then he has had various attachments and carried out applied research assignments, projects and programme evaluations as well as being attached as an advisor to the Ministry of Rural Development 2004/2005. He continues to make working visits to Afghanistan for different international agencies and NGOs, most recently in May this year as a Trustee of Afghanaid. In 2011 he was awarded the OBE for his work in Afghanistan.

From 7pm for a 7.30 start.