ISLAMABAD (AP) — Afghan farmers lost more than $1 billion in income from opium sales after the Taliban banned poppy cultivation, according to a U.N. drug agency report released Sunday.
When the Taliban took power in August 2021, Afghanistan was the world’s largest opium producer and a major source of heroin in Europe and Asia.
They vowed to wipe out the country’s drug-growing industry and imposed a formal ban in April 2022, dealing a major blow to hundreds of thousands of farmers and day laborers who relied on the crop’s income to survive. Opium cultivation fell by 95% after the ban, according to the report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.
By 2023, the value of Afghanistan’s opiate exports often exceeded the value of its legal exports. UN officials said the sharp decline in the opium economy is likely to have far-reaching consequences for the country, as opiate exports before the ban accounted for between 9% and 14% of the national GDP.
Afghans urgently need humanitarian assistance to meet their most urgent needs, absorb the shock of loss of income and save lives, said UNODC Executive Director Ghada Waly.
“Afghanistan urgently needs strong investment in sustainable livelihoods to provide Afghans with non-opium opportunities,” she said.
Afghans are struggling with drought, severe economic hardship and the ongoing consequences of decades of war and natural disasters.
The downturn and halt to international financing that propped up the former Western-backed government’s economy are pushing people into poverty, hunger and addiction.
A UNODC report in September said Afghanistan was the world’s fastest-growing producer of methamphetamine, with seizures of the synthetic drug increasing while poppy cultivation declined.
Lower incomes along the opioid supply chain could lead to other illegal activities such as trafficking in weapons, people or synthetic drugs, says the latest UNODC report.