Farmers scrape opium from poppy bulbs during the spring harvest in Kandahar, Afghanistan, on April 4.BRYAN DENTON/The New York Times News Service
Despite a strict new ban in Afghanistan on cultivating narcotics, Taliban officials are stockpiling opium and other drugs, and continuing to allow some drug production, a crucial contributor to the country’s economy.
The Taliban ban on narcotics – including growing, producing, transporting and consuming – was announced in April. Drug control has been one major demand of the international community of the Islamist group, which took over the country in August, 2021, and is seeking formal international recognition in order to wind back sanctions that are severely hampering banking, business and development.
The strict prohibition on drugs was decreed by the Taliban’s supreme leader Haibatullah Akhundzada. “If anyone violates the decree, the crop will be destroyed immediately and the violator will be treated according to the Shariah law,” the order reads.
But Taliban allies bought and stored tons of opium before ordering the stop to cultivation, Ahmad Agha, an opium farmer from Helmand province, told The Globe and Mail. “The opium trade is now run by the local Taliban commanders,” he said.
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Afghanistan is the world’s biggest supplier of opium and a base for the production of heroin and methamphetamines. Illicit drugs contributed US$2.7-billion to the country’s economy, representing more than 10 per cent of its national income in 2021, according to the UN. Seventy per cent of agricultural land was used to grow opium or other drug crops.
The new Taliban ban on narcotics in the country has driven up the price of opium and heroin and pushed the drug trade partly into hiding, where it continues to thrive, according to eight Afghan sources involved in various facets of it.
“The Taliban are not stopping us from trading,” said Ataulluah, a 60-year-old who has been dealing in opium as a small middleman for 20 years. “The same business is still operating. It is now just hidden in remote areas.”
He said the local Taliban want people such as him to continue their trade. “The big commanders have a share in the business with the big traffickers,” he said. And even if the Taliban eliminate local consumption, he said, trafficking with Pakistan and Iran is likely to continue.
The Globe interviewed the sources – including a farmer, drug trader, police officer and Taliban official – over WhatsApp, in Pashto, Dari and English. It is identifying some of them by first names only – or not at all – as they fear retribution for speaking publicly.
A letter shared with The Globe, which appears to be from a provincial government agency in Helmand, an agricultural hub in the south of Afghanistan, suggests some Taliban support of the drug trade.
“Do not use main roads for transferring goods,” the letter advises drug traffickers. “We will not be able to protect anyone captured with narcotics on main roads.”
Mohammad Khan, a 58-year-old dealer who trades thousands of tons of opium annually, said that some opium processing factories are still active in places that are difficult to access. “Trade must all operate in secret now,” he said.
Most of the illegal farms are in Helmand and Kandahar provinces, those hardest hit by the war, and are owned by farmers who have limited other sources of income. The Taliban want to show the world that they are taking action on drugs, said a 28-year-old journalist from Kandahar, but poppies are still growing in the mountains and factories are still running in rural areas. Also, he said, the Taliban regime has stored enough opium to benefit from sales for 10 years.
In places where drug crops have been destroyed under the new ban, the empty opium fields offer hope.
“We yearn for farms to grow alternative crops so that we won’t starve,” said Mohammed Hasham, a 62-year-old Kandahar landowner. But the Taliban have not offered help to farmers to cope with the current drought or transition to alternative crops, he said.
A Kandahar district police official said he plans to eliminate all drugs growing in his region by next year. Local opium farmers are generally co-operative, he said, because they are threatened with jail if they do not comply. However, they are also allowed to keep some of their recently harvested crops to earn income over the next few months.
In Helmand province, a Taliban official said the regime has told farmers to destroy hundreds of hectares of cultivated poppies and thrown some landowners into jail. He hopes farmers will now plant wheat, fruit and corn.
The UN said Afghan farmers need donations of seeds and fertilizer, and funding for irrigation and road projects, to make their land productive. “The international community must urgently provide basic needs and services to the people of Afghanistan to promote sustainable reduction in illicit drug production,” read a recent report from the Office on Drugs and Crime. But many Western governments are reluctant to support UN aid to Afghanistan in the face of Taliban human-rights abuses and the deterioration of women’s rights in the country.
History shows that stamping out the drug trade in Afghanistan won’t be easy. In 1995, when the Taliban first came into power, they outlawed drug cultivation and production. But that did not last, according to the U.S. Department of State. A year later, the Taliban stopped enforcing their anti-drug rules and soon began taxing opium poppy farmers and traffickers. In 2000, the Taliban banned opium production again, but trade continued to flourish.
And today, with the country’s economy in free fall and the UN estimating that 95 per cent of families do not have enough to eat, many Afghans worry how they will get by without war activities or opium as sources of income.
Abdul, a 55-year-old farmer, said he was glad to destroy his opium fields to comply with the new ban. “This is a bad business,” he said. “The Taliban want to obey Islamic orders.”
But though he said he is happy for the first time in years now that he is no longer farming opium, he doesn’t know how he will support his family of 10.
“I will not be able to plant new crops in time for next year,” he said. “We have no seeds, and we are suffering from drought.”
So, like many in the country, he still depends on the drug trade that he wants to leave: He has 30 kilograms of opium stashed away at home.
“At least I have saved some,” he said. “I will wait for the price to go up further.”
With a report from Reuters
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