Taliban police destroy an opium crop (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)
Having used the harvest to make money and garner support, they are now waging the tough campaign they have promised since returning to power
In Afghanistan, the Taliban have launched a very tough campaign against the cultivation of opium poppies, which the country is very rich in, because it is considered a violation of Sharia, the “Islamic law” implemented by the Taliban in its most radical form. In a gradual but determined approach, they first introduced a series of bans and then began active eradication of opium poppies by dedicated police units. The consequences for the incomes of many farmers have been enormous and have also led to disputes, which according to some analysts could endanger the stability of the regime.
The Taliban had announced plans to end opium cultivation during the first press conference after their second conquest of Afghanistan in mid-August 2021 following the US withdrawal, but their announcement was met with some skepticism in the twenty years before the country was retaken drug trafficking, and by the time they imposed a similar ban in 2001, during their first regime, illegal opium production had continued. Not even the Afghan government, which had ruled the country for the twenty years after its fall, had ever succeeded in banning opium poppy cultivation.
It is not yet clear whether the Taliban have decided to eliminate these crops altogether, or whether they may temporarily and covertly centralize control of some production or trade in their hands for economic benefit. Currently, the prices and international availability of opium-derived compounds are not declining, but it is not clear whether this is due to a vast inventory of produce already being grown or to the crops that remain. The Taliban regime is grappling with the dire consequences of cuts in foreign aid and funding on which Afghanistan has always been heavily dependent. With their arrival and the fall of the previous government, they were deprived of aid.
However, the estimates by analysts and experts, also based on satellite images, are quite impressive: in the southern province of Helmand, where most of the opium poppy plantations have been until now, the harvests have increased from 1,200 square kilometers in April 2022 to around 1,200 square kilometers on April 10, 2023. In in Nangarhar province, where large amounts of opium poppies were also grown, crops increased from about 70 square kilometers to just over 8 square kilometers.
David Mansfield, a British researcher who has been studying Afghan drug trafficking for over 25 years, estimates that opium poppy production will fall by around 80 percent between 2022 and 2023, a drop he describes as “unprecedented”.
Before the arrival of the Taliban, Afghanistan produced about 85 percent of the world’s traded opium, and heroin made from Afghan opium provided 95 percent of the heroin market across Europe. According to United Nations estimates, in 2021 alone, opium poppy cultivation and the resulting drug trade in Afghanistan generated an estimated revenue of one to two and a half billion people, equivalent to 9 to 14 percent of the country’s total GDP. About 450,000 Afghans were employed in this sector. Opium production had grown the most since 2001, after the US invasion, and peaked in 2017.
The gradual way in which the Taliban imposed the opium bans – “an elaborate step-by-step process,” as Mansfield called it – enabled them to avoid undue opposition from the populace and local farmers, but in the countryside it began with a series of particularly repressive and violent measures against people with substance addictions. Thousands of people were arrested on the streets, beaten, jailed, shaved bald and imprisoned for months.
People being held in a Taliban-run prison waiting to be shaved for their drug addiction (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
The first ban, imposed in 2021, was for ephedra, a plant that contains pseudoephedrine, a compound found in many over-the-counter medicines but can be narcotic in large amounts. The ban on growing opium poppies was introduced the following year, in April 2022: anyone who violates it is set on fire in the fields and locked up. The Taliban then began using special police units to physically destroy the crops: some BBC correspondents who the Taliban had allowed to see one of these operations reported the intensity and speed with which they carried it out, and six at a time Fields 200-300 square meters, destroyed in just over half an hour.
In some cases, these operations have resulted in very violent clashes with farmers, killing at least one of them. In many provinces, opium poppy cultivation is the only livelihood, especially now that Afghanistan no longer receives economic aid from abroad. In Kandahar, one of the cities where the Taliban enjoys the greatest support, opium poppy cultivation generates total revenues equivalent to more than 350 million euros per year.
For this reason, some analysts, such as William Byrd, an analyst at the United States Institute for Peace, believe that the Taliban’s harsh campaign, combined with cuts in international aid and the weakness of every other economic sector in the country, could lead to their own regime’s destabilization. The Taliban conquered Afghanistan by presenting itself as a cohesive group capable of bringing peace, stability and prosperity. Over the course of those two years, they showed that they were divided and unable to deal with terrorist attacks and the increase in crime, even to ensure any form of economic well-being for the population. Also because they have gradually abolished almost all women’s rights and freedoms that have been set by many foreign governments as a condition for the release of funds and funding.
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