Afghan farmers are benefiting from the Taliban’s drug ban

“With the banning of opium, the price went up to the sky: my life is better with this order of Shaikh Sahib” 

Afghanistan has a long and colourful relationship with psychoactive plants. It was a popular destination on the Hippie Trail in the 1950s and 60s, thanks to its famous cannabis culture. Rural dwellers discovered that a shrub covering the country’s mountains, ephedra, is easily converted into crystal meth and a potent weight-loss drug named ephedrine.

But the opium poppy is – arguably – the psychoactive plant that’s most deeply ingrained in Afghan society. It’s long been relied on as a cheap form of pain relief in poorer rural areas and even reportedly used for ceremonial purposes in some regions.

For over half a century, farm owners and labourers have depended on the poppy harvest as a valuable source of income in the world’s least well-off country. Workers cut open every seed pod by hand a fortnight after the petals have fallen, making the small dash of milk into opioids such as morphine, codeine and most famously: heroin.

Afghanistan supplied around 80 per cent of the illegal global opiate demand and 95 per cent of Europe’s heroin in 2022, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reports. There were 233,000 hectares of land under opium poppy cultivation in the country that year, which was the third-largest area since records began.

there has been no notable decline in narcotics trafficking out of the country once responsible for up to 80 per cent of the world’s illicit opium since the Taliban again banned drug cultivation and production in April 2022

The Taliban government first banned opium poppy cultivation in July 2000, in response to international pressure. This prohibition lasted for only a year before widespread social unrest brought it to an end. With a key income stream unexpectedly banned, many rural families found themselves unable to pay the bills and afford food.

Drug seizures at the border of Afghanistan remain consistent, according to police from border countries including Iran, Pakistan and Tajikistan. They say there has been no notable decline in narcotics trafficking out of the country once responsible for up to 80 per cent of the world’s illicit opium since the Taliban again banned drug cultivation and production in April 2022.

Afghanistan’s landlocked neighbour, Tajikistan, claimed in February 2024 that organised crime groups continue to bring significant quantities of heroin and opium – along with methamphetamine – into the country.

The Secretary-General of Iran’s Drug Control Headquarters, Eskandar Momeni, said that there is no notable decline in opioid trafficking from Afghanistan to his country, according to a May 2024  report by the Iranian state news agency, ISNA.

Momeni called for the United Nations to address drug trafficking out of Afghanistan in a meeting with the Secretary-General for Afghanistan and Head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), Roza Isakovna Otunbayeva, in Tehran on Monday 12th May 2024.

According to Momeni, not only has heroin and opium trafficking remained consistent, but the volume of synthetic drugs flowing from Afghanistan into his country has dramatically increased. He demanded greater global restrictions on the sale of chemicals used to manufacture these substances – which include crystal meth and captagon – to Afghanistan.

Despite the complaints from Iran and Tajikistan, the Taliban’s Ministry of Interior Affairs says there’s still a heavily enforced opium poppy cultivation ban in Afghanistan. The anti-narcotics department shared a social media post claiming to have destroyed 1,057 acres of opium poppies in the previous 24 hours, on May 22nd 2024. It also reported that police arrested 21 people in connection with the transfer, sale and use of drugs including crystal meth and “pills”.

This fits with ongoing United Nations reports of a significant decline in opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover of 2022. Hi-res satellite images – from the geospatial analysis firm Alcis – also show an unprecedented second year of near-zero cultivation.

leafie spoke to socio-economist Dr David Mansfield to find out the truth behind these seemingly conflicting reports. He’s spent years studying the country’s farmgate trade in opium, while contextualising drugs as a development issue and coming up with what he calls “pro-poor” policies.

Dr Mansfield says that – two years after the drug ban’s introduction – there is still widespread support for it in Afghanistan including in those areas ordinarily reliant on the opium poppy. Many landowners and labourers feel that this ongoing prohibition is benefiting their livelihood, which is a stark contrast to the short-lived ban in 2000. A large part of this difference in impact stems from the timing of the ban’s announcement.

The Taliban announced its first drug ban around three months after the poppy harvest ended in July 2000. Dr Mansfield explains, “The price of opium was as low as $30 a kilo, so farmers needed to sell as much of their stock as possible just to cover their basic living expenses. Of course, this meant that only a small handful of people profited when the value of a kilo rose to $700 in 2001.”

In contrast, the newly formed Taliban government announced its second ban around a fortnight before the harvest began in April 2022. It gave everyone a two-month grace period to collect their crop. This meant that sellers benefited from an immediate sharp increase in opium prices and could – thus – afford to retain more of their crop than usual in anticipation of a shortage.

Afghanistan’s unstable economy means that opium – a non-perishable crop – is an unofficial currency. Unlike cash savings, it retains a relatively high value. It’s also easily converted to cash at the farm gate, as traders willingly travel to buy it. Dr Mansfield says, “Farmers who grow poppies in Afghanistan try to retain as much of their crop as possible. Typically, they sell only as much opium as absolutely needed during the harvest period.”

In a collaborative study, Dr Mansfield and Alcis used high-resolution satellite imagery and livelihood analysis to gain insight into how much opium and heroin may be stored in Afghanistan. They discovered that there are still at least 13,717 metric tons of opium in the former desert areas of the country, which is the equivalent of 283 kilograms per household. With a value of $717 per kilogram in March 2024, this equates to a total of $203k per household.

“It helps explain the ongoing support for the ban among the landed families of the south and west,” Dr Mansfield says, “As many of them have seen their purchasing power and capital increase dramatically since it was imposed.”

However, it’s not yet clear whether the extra cash flow – and added purchasing power – will aid the transition to a legitimate economy. The study highlights that there are vast swathes of agricultural land going unused. Poppies are far more drought tolerant than many licit crops.

Yet the global heroin trade continues unabated in the face of Afghanistan’s moral and economic dilemma. Farmers in Myanmar have already increased poppy cultivation to profit from the Taliban’s prohibition, just as agricultural workers in Afghanistan filled the void when Iran’s shah banned this practice back in 1955.

In spite of reports of adulterated heroin, Britain’s dealers are still accessing a ready supply. The import level price of heroin has barely risen 20 per cent since the Taliban announced its drug prohibition with most UK traffickers paying between £20k to £25k for an uncut kilo, the Independent Drug Expert Alliance reports.

The only real difference, for now, is the fact that the overwhelming majority of Afghanistan’s poppy fields lay empty, as landowners profit from the vastly increased price of opium and heroin.