Poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, the long-standing centre of global opium production, is estimated to have fallen by 85 per cent following the Taliban’s rise to power, new analysis shows.
In April last year, the group’s religious leaders prohibited poppy farming across the country. More than 12 months on, the ban is being described by experts as “the most successful counter-narcotics effort in human history”.
Nationwide poppy cultivation is below 30,000 hectares for 2023, compared to more than 210,000 hectares in 2022, according to satellite imagery analysis from Alcis, a geographic information services company.
Regionally, the provinces of Helmand, Farah and Nimroz have recorded the greatest reductions in cultivation, at 99, 95 and 91 per cent, respectively, Alcis said.
“There is now little doubt that farmers across vast swathes of the country abandoned opium production this year,” the analysis said.
After a year-long ban, experts are waiting to see if the Taliban’s edict will last for a second season, which starts each November with the planting of poppy seeds.
“We are in uncharted waters,” said Dr David Mansfield, a UK expert on illicit economies in Afghanistan, in comments that accompanied Alcis’ analysis.
The last time the Taliban were in power, Dr Mansfield explained, their crackdown on poppy cultivation was swiftly ended following 9/11 and the regime’s subsequent collapse.
“It could be argued that there is much greater potential for a more enduring ban this time round, given that when the Taliban seized Kabul in August 2021, they inherited a very different country with established government institutions and a much larger economy,” he added.
Graeme Smith, an Afghanistan expert at Crisis Group, told the Telegraph in July that the Taliban crackdown has so far been “the most successful counter-narcotics effort in human history, according to the volume of drugs taken off the market”.
However, Dr Mansfield said there “is already considerable evidence that the current ban has not been uniformly accepted by the rural population or by those within the Taliban’s own ranks responsible for implementing it.”
Alcis’ analysis shows that poppy cultivation increased from 13,803 hectares to 15,391 hectares in the mountainous Badakhshan province throughout 2023. It said there has also been “persistent cultivation in the upper reaches of the mountains of southern Nangarhar”.
“When the economic impact of a ban on poppy cultivation is felt collectively across a growing population, local resistance can quickly escalate, prompting those in the districts responsible for enforcement to retreat, unwilling to impose further losses on their own families, neighbours, and communities,” said Dr Mansfield.
It’s estimated the Taliban’s poppy ban has wiped out the equivalent of 450,000 full-time jobs in agriculture – a major hit to an economy still reeling from drought, conflict and cuts to development programmes.
By itself, the Afghan opiate economy, including domestic consumption and exports, accounted for between 9 and 14 per cent per cent of the country’s GDP in 2021.
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