Poppy harvests and opium production have fallen by 95% in Afghanistan since the government banned their cultivation Taliban. In April 2022, after returning to power, the Taliban banned the cultivation of opium and heroin.
This is good news for the international community: between 80 and 90 percent of the world’s heroin and opium comes from Afghanistan. But not for the Afghan farmers, who will have extremely negative consequences.
“Today, the Afghan people urgently need humanitarian assistance (…) to absorb the shock of loss of income and save lives,” Ghada Waly, Director-General of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), said in a report today published.
Grower income, estimated at $1.36 billion in 2022, has plunged 92% this year to $110 million.
The Afghan economy, which is already in a catastrophic state, has been severely affected by these losses. Last year, poppies accounted for almost a third of Afghanistan’s agricultural production, making the country the world’s largest producer.
According to satellite images analyzed by the UN, poppy cultivation has stopped in 24 of the country’s 44 provinces.
The decline in poppy production also means an increase in the production of synthetic drugs such as methamphetamine, which is currently exploding among Afghans, whose drug addiction rates are very high, warns the UNODC.
Opium financed the Taliban
It is not the first time that the Taliban authorities have banned poppy cultivation. He had already done this in 2000, a few months before their government was overthrown by the international coalition. Over the next twenty years of war, the Taliban, despite their strict interpretation of Islam, heavily taxed the country’s culture and transportation to finance their fight against the Washington-led coalition, which included Ottawa. According to the UN, opium provided around half of the Taliban’s income in 2016.
During its intervention in Afghanistan, Canada tried to apply the so-called “3D” approach (development, diplomacy and defense) in the Kandahar region for which it is responsible, without being able to significantly reduce poppy production.
According to UNODC, revenue related to the drug market was around $2 billion in 2021, with the Taliban receiving around $400 million.
Why kill the goose that lays the golden eggs?
Officially, the Taliban government justifies the ban on religious grounds: it wants to create a society that is in line with its fundamentalist Islamist ideology.
But waging a “war on drugs” after decades of profiting from them is particularly vile.
According to the UNODC, 3.4 million Afghans, or nearly 10% of the population, turn to drugs to escape despair, including 1.4 million on opium and heroin.
The government in Kabul undoubtedly hopes that its draconian decision will prompt the international community to resume humanitarian and development assistance to help agricultural workers and small farmers transition to other crops. The former European Union ambassador to Kabul, Jean-François Cautain, believes that this ban could also be an important element in the negotiations to recognize the regime.
