In Afghanistan, opium poppy cultivation has increased by 32% over one year, according to the first report on the subject since the Taliban took power in August 2021, published Tuesday, October 31 by the UN. “It now reaches 233,000 hectares”alerts the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), noting that opium prices “flew away” since the Taliban banned the planting of the flower in April 2022.
This year’s crop was largely exempt from the decree. Afghan farmers must now decide in early November whether to plant opium poppy for next year without knowing whether authorities will enforce the ban, says the body based in Vienna, Austria.
They are ‘trapped in the illicit opiate economy’according to UNODC Executive Director Ghada Waly, quoted in a statement, which calls on the international community to “intensify interventions”.
Afghanistan is by far the world’s largest producer of poppy, from which opium, heroin and “farmers’ income from the sale of opium has tripled” in one year, estimates the UNODC. Increased from 430 million euros in 2021 to 1.4 billion euros in 2022, it is the “most profitable recorded for years” and represents 29% of the country’s total agricultural value, compared to 9% a year earlier.
Between 80% and 90% of the world’s opium
However, the increase in income has not necessarily translated into purchasing power, as inflation has soared over the same period, with food prices rising by an average of 35%, says the UNODC.
Seizures of opiates in countries bordering Afghanistan indicate that the trafficking of Afghan opium and heroin has not ceased. Between 80% and 90% of the heroin and opium in the world comes from Afghanistan, mainly from the south-west of the country, according to the UN.
The cultivation of the flower was briefly prohibited in 2000 by the Taliban, a few months before the fundamentalist regime was overthrown by the international coalition in response to the attacks of September 11, 2001.
During their twenty years of guerrilla warfare against foreign forces, the Taliban then heavily taxed poppy growers in the regions under their control, thus becoming an important source of income for them. The United States and its NATO allies then tried to encourage farmers to produce wheat or saffron. Initiatives that failed, while the Taliban controlled the main poppy production areas.