Afghanistan’s Opium Economy

The Taliban has told farmers in the Kandahar province to stop cultivating poppy and switch to saffron which is less profitable, and farmers are unhappy.

The US invasion of Afghanistan was a military failure, and so it was on its war on narcotics as well, during its twenty-year occupation of the nation. Afghanistan has long been the global center of opium and poppy cultivation—it is the heart of both the Afghan economy and society—and thus, all American efforts to control it, failed. Before the U.S. led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the nation accounted for 72% of the world’s opium supply, of over 3600 metric tons, of which 96% of poppy cultivation was done in Taliban-controlled areas, like Helmand and Badakshan. The drug crop was given priority over essential food crops like wheat, over fertile Afghan farmland, even at the expense of citizens struggling for food.

After the Taliban’s ban on poppy cultivation in 2000, some of the highest cultivating provinces cumulatively saw a 91% reduction in poppy farmland. However, this was short lived, and soon after, Afghanistan broke its own record of opium output. The cultivation has continued uncontrollably thereafter. Even as COVID-19 took a hit on the world economy in 2020, poppy cultivation continued to boom, increasing by 37%, during that period. As of 2020, Afghanistan had gone down from 13 to just 12 poppy farm-free provinces, out of its 34, despite efforts to curb it. The Taliban profits heavily off of its opium production—the same year, the group reportedly brought in $416 million from this narcotics income. They are paid taxes by farmers, and drug money by traffickers. Several traffickers who have been interviewed state that they are protected by the Taliban, and expressed the view that their payments are equivalent to taxes, as trafficking opium is essentially licit in Taliban controlled areas.

At the Taliban’s first press conference after securing power, spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said that “Afghanistan will be a narcotics-free country but it needs international assistance. The international community should help us so that we can have alternative crops”. At a superficial level, this seems logical—if international aid is directed towards incentivizing Afghan farmers to cultivate substitute crops to poppy, opium production will reduce. However, the roughly $9 billion spent in failed counternarcotics efforts in Afghanistan since 2001, which included attempting this strategy, have proven that this is a counterintuitive approach.

A counternarcotics report issued by SIGAR, the US agency for reconstruction of Afghanistan, shows how between 2005 and 2008, some developmental programs were directed towards supporting farmers and helping them transition into cultivating different crops. However, these efforts were too short-term, and simply giving farmers different crops did not work. It instead, actually led to an increase in overall production as prices of raw opium were driven up. Researchers David Mansfield and Adam Pain have argued that a reason why opium production boomed in Afghanistan was because it became a ‘low-risk crop in a high risk environment”. Historian Barnett Rubin stated that the increased levels of cultivation were “the result—not the cause—of insecurity”.

Now, the Taliban has told farmers in the Kandahar province to stop cultivating poppy and switch to saffron which is less profitable, and farmers are unhappy. “If the Taliban prohibit the cultivation of poppy, people will die from starvation”, said a farmer from Uruzgan in a phone interview. “We still hope they will let us grow poppies. Nothing can compensate for the income we get from growing poppies.”

A 2020 UNODC report titled the ‘Voices of Quchaqbar’ delved into Afghanistan’s drug trade from the perspective of opiate traffickers and their motivations. It notes a poppy cultivator saying that “…finding a proper job is difficult. And because [the] drug trade has good money… I can support my family.”

Some of the most significant findings from the report portray just how integral women are to the trade. Ironically, in a country where women are seen as second class citizens or not seen at all, the illicit opium trade actively looks for women, to work as couriers. It is perhaps one of the only situations in which their small space in society is of some advantage—they can get away with smuggling as the men at security checkpoints don’t give them a second glance. “Women provide protection when the Government is searching the village”, it is quoted in the report. Pregnant women are of preference, and women gain the trust of other struggling women in need of an income and recruit them. However, there are no reports of any women in leadership roles—they are still working under men, and their roles are limited to “the provision of assistance and support”.

The findings of this report clearly demonstrate how the opiate trade is carried on the backs of struggling people who are trying to provide financial support to their families. Women and children do hours and hours of unpaid labour and help in the cultivation and harvesting of poppy, while other women are involved in the trafficking aspect itself. Afghanistan’s opium trade is simply too large and profitable to be solved by saffron or other crops. Like several of the issues that Afghanistan’s economy is facing, this too could at least benefit, if not be solved, by securing women’s rights. It is more reasonable to think that there is a chance to curb production if farmers and traffickers—both men and women—can obtain other opportunities that can move them to secondary and tertiary job sectors, which will provide them with a source of income better or at least comparable to that of poppy cultivation. Until then, it is clear that the drug trade remains as a top preference.

With the Taliban back in power and infighting in its factions to grab power, a civil war is imminent—as a top American general predicts—which will not be good for the nation. It will, however, be good for poppy cultivation, which will only continue to be augmented and protected by its Taliban warlords to fund their nefarious agendas.