Opium production in Afghanistan
Afghanistan and Pakistan increased production and became major suppliers of opiates to Western Europe and North America in the mid-1970s, when political instability combined with a prolonged drought disrupted supplies from the Golden Triangle.
A number of resistance leaders concentrated on increasing opium production in their regions to finance their operations, regardless of its haram Islamic status, in particular Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Mullah Nasim Akhundzada, and Ismat Muslim.
[15][16] (At this time the United States was pursuing an "arms-length" supporting strategy of the Mujahideen, the main purpose of which was to cripple the Soviet Union slowly into withdrawal through attrition rather than effect a quick and decisive overthrow).
Nasim Akhundzada, who controlled the traditional poppy growing region of northern Helmand, issued quotas for opium production,[citation needed] which he was even rumoured[weasel words] to enforce with torture and extreme violence.
The Pakistani government, US Agency for International Development (USAID) and other groups were involved in attempting to eliminate poppy cultivation from certain areas of the North-West Frontier Province (now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) bordering Afghanistan.
[21] In July 2000, Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, collaborating with the UN to eradicate heroin production in Afghanistan, declared that growing poppies was un-Islamic, resulting in one of the world's most successful anti-drug campaigns.
[23][24][25][26] By November 2001, and with the start of the Afghan War, the collapse of the economy and the scarcity of other sources of revenue forced many of the country's farmers to resort to growing opium for export (1,300 km2 or 500 sq mi in 2004 according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime).
In December 2001, a number of prominent Afghans met in Bonn, Germany, under UN auspices to develop a plan to reestablish the State of Afghanistan, including provisions for a new constitution and national elections.
Afghan farmers claimed that "government officials take bribes for turning a blind eye to the drug trade while punishing poor opium growers.
[33] The Afghanistan Opium Risk Assessment 2013, issued by UNODC, suggests that the Taliban has, since 2008, been supporting farmers growing poppy, as a source of income for the insurgency.
[38] On October 28, 2010, agents of Russia's Federal Service for the Control of Narcotics joined Afghan and US anti-drug forces in an operation to destroy a major drug production site near Jalalabad.
As had been the case in Indochina during the Vietnam War,[41] the US invasion has in fact caused a massive increase in opium production, the aforementioned eradication efforts being largely window dressing.
[8] According to a report published by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in November 2022, the expanse of opium cultivation in Afghanistan has extended to 233,000 hectares.
They argue that illegal diversion of the crop could only be minimized if the Afghans had the necessary resources, institutional capacity and control mechanisms in place to ensure that they were the sole purchaser of opiate raw materials.
The Afghan government has ruled out licit cultivation as a means of tackling the illegal drug trade: however in Turkey in the 1970s, legalizing opium production, with US support brought illicit trafficking under control within four years.
[54] A licensing system would bring farmers and villages into a supportive relationship with the Afghan government, instead of alienating the population by destroying their livelihood, and provide the economic diversification that could help cultivators break ties with the illicit opium trade.
[citation needed] The International Narcotics Control Board states that an over production in licit opiates since 2000 has led to stockpiles in producing countries 'that could cover demand for two years'.
According to Antonio Costa, "Opium poppy cultivation, processing, and transport have become Afghanistan's top employers, its main source of capital, and the principal base of its economy."
With the reemergence of the Taliban and the virtual absence of the rule of law in the countryside, opium production and heroin processing have dramatically increased, especially in the southern province of Helmand.
[68] In an April 25, 2007 op-ed in the Washington Post, Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of UNODC, asked "Does opium defy the laws of economics?
[70] This can be attributed to higher profits from poppy cultivation and lack of opportunity for other farming practices due to land scarcity and more accessible loans from money providers for this activity.
Many emigrants to places such as Pakistan and Iran witnessed the profitability of poppy cultivation in land development, through association with local landowners and businessmen, and were inspired to bring about the same economic improvement in their own lives and villages.
Local shopkeepers used capital, which was acquired from buying opium resins from farmers and selling them to dealers at the Tajikistan-Afghanistan border, to invest in their own small shops, generating more income.
[73] While the Taliban were considered a threat both to the human rights of Afghans, and to other areas of the world by providing a sanctuary for transnational terrorists, they also demonstrated an ability to strictly enforce a moratorium on opium production.
[13] There is evidence that the Taliban ban carried the seeds of its own lack of sustainability, due to a many-fold increase in the burden of opium-related debt (locking many households into dependence on future opium poppy cultivation), forcing asset sales to make ends meet, etc.
"[13] With Afghanistan's limited irrigation, in which qanats (karez) still play a big role, transportation and other agricultural infrastructure, growing alternative crops is not only less profitable, but more difficult.
In addition, interviews were conducted with users of the hawala system (drug dealers, businessmen, traders, international aid workers), regulators (government officials, central bank personnel), and formal service providers (bankers, accountants).
In addition to hawala, they found protection payments and connections, by which the drug industry has major linkages with local administration as well as high levels of the national government.
[66] Helmand has emerged as a key facilitator of the opium trade, both between provinces and exports, while overall estimates of the local hawala markets' drug-related component are of a similar order of magnitude to those in Kandahar.
Within a span of thirty years, 3700 Iranian police officers have been killed and tens of thousands more injured in counter narcotics operations mostly on Afghan and Pakistan borders.
