Despite ‘Ban’ on Opium, Afghanistan’s Poppy Crop Is Growing
More drugs and higher prices a year after the Taliban takeover.
November 2, 2022 (Foreign Policy)—The Taliban that took over Afghanistan after a 20-year war largely funded by heroin trafficking have, after pretending to ban drugs, instead turbocharged the cultivation and sale of narcotics a year after their takeover. While the United States and other international donors continue to pour money into the country hoping to avoid mass hunger over the winter, the terrorist-led group is raking in huge sums from the illicit traffic that supplies 80 percent of the world’s heroin.
Two new reports show the failure of U.S. diplomacy to cajole the Taliban into making the transition from insurgency to government. A huge expansion of opium poppy production reflects the Taliban’s control of the major southern growing regions that were the hottest battlegrounds as the then-insurgents fought to get their drugs to market. Now business is booming, and a nominal ban on drug production has only pushed prices—and the potential Taliban take from the illicit trade—higher.
The reports by the U.S. Congress-mandated Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) and the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) are just the latest evidence of the Taliban’s disconnect from the norms of governance and the impunity they enjoy while flouting international law. Heroin trafficking has long been a hallmark of the Taliban, accounting for an estimated half a billion dollars in annual income in the final years of the group’s war against the U.S.-backed republic government. Fighting seasons throughout the insurgency coincided with the cycle of the poppy crop—planting, cultivation, and trucking of the raw opium to warehouses for conversion to heroin. Organized crime grew on the back of cooperation with the Taliban. Addiction rates in neighbors including Pakistan, Iran, Central Asian states, and Russia were a huge source of friction between these countries and the United States, which was more focused on eradicating South American cocaine. Nevertheless, billions of dollars were spent on failed poppy eradication and substitution programs.
READ MORE — https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/11/02/afghanistan-taliban-opium-heroin-trafficking/