How will the Taliban deal with opium cultivation?

The United States of America failed to combat the cultivation of opium in Afghanistan

Experts point out that the failure of the United States in Afghanistan is not only its decline in the face of the Taliban, but the intervention that lasted more than 20 years also did not succeed in dismantling the opium economy in the country.

From airstrikes on drug-making laboratories to stimulating wheat cultivation and deploying resources to break up local cartels, Washington ended up spending a whopping $8.6 billion to choke off the opium trade, as estimated in a 2018 US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan (SIGAR) report.

However, the end result is that far from reducing poppy cultivation, it has increased several times in the past two decades in the country.

Three times the size of New York

The United States has Apple, Microsoft, and Tesla, while Afghanistan has an opium industry. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) reported that in 2017, opium production amounted to 9,900 tons worth $1.4 billion in sales to farmers, or nearly 7% of Afghanistan's GDP, which rose to 11.5% in 2019.

In the same year, the total income from domestic consumption, production, and exports of opiates in Afghanistan was estimated to be between $1.2 and $2.1 billion.

The value of a gram of opiates produced in Afghanistan increases after each border crossing and is estimated to be tenfold when it reaches European markets.

According to the Afghanistan Opium Survey 2020, the total area under cultivation of opium poppy in Afghanistan was about 224,000 hectares in 2020, an increase of 37 percent or 61,000 hectares compared to 2019.

By way of comparison, in 2020, the area under poppy cultivation is about three times the size of New York City, which is more than 78,000 hectares. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime attributed the rapid annual rise in opium production to multiple factors, including political instability, the absence of alternative employment opportunities, and a lack of connectivity that restricts access to urban markets.

Taliban and opium

Historically, after coming to power, the Taliban banned opium in July 2000 and this led to a decrease in global supply, however, it bounced back soon after in 2002 and has been on an increasing trend since then. In subsequent years, most of the poppy was grown in Helmand Province, where opium continues to thrive to this day.

As of 2020, Helmand Province contributes 62 percent of the hectare area for opium production.

The poppy sector is a very profitable business and is expected to grow even more in value in the coming years, mainly because there is still little or no industry capable of providing livelihoods and contributing to the country's GDP on such a large scale.

The main rationale behind the projected growth of poppy cultivation is the large population of the country, especially in the rural areas, which are highly dependent, directly and indirectly, on opium. In rural areas, about 35 percent of all village chiefs reported that some villagers planted opium poppy in 2019.

Some alternative sources of economic growth, such as donor funding and foreign aid, are not sustainable, while other economic sectors that have the potential to match the added value of the opium industry have not yet been developed. One such sector is the mining industry in Afghanistan.

The length and breadth of the opium trade in Afghanistan extends to regional markets such as: Pakistan, Iran, Tajikistan, India, Turkey and Uzbekistan, forming the “golden crescent”.

Taliban or non-Taliban, they cannot underestimate the dependence of ordinary Afghans on opium cultivation. Unless the next best alternative to opium in terms of capacity to absorb Afghans is invested and developed by regional states and international organizations.

Why?

The question is, why doesn't the Taliban government explicitly ban opium cultivation? Currently, $9.5 billion from the Afghan government has been frozen in US banks. Meanwhile, the European Union announced that it will not provide direct assistance to the Afghan government. Other Western countries have also made their aid to the Afghan government conditional on their own conditions.

And the last situation is that some areas of Afghanistan are already under the control of freezing cold. People have nothing to eat, while the United Nations fears that if aid is not delivered in time, it could lead to widespread famine. According to the United Nations, children are widely expected to die from malnutrition. How can the Taliban ban poppy cultivation in all countries in these difficult conditions? As if they are being strangled from all sides and asked to ban the cultivation of opium.

If international economic sanctions are lifted on the Afghan government and given the opportunity to act, it will be possible for it to take a step in the right direction and offer Afghan farmers alternative agricultural options.

There is no doubt that the current Afghan government does not consider poppy cultivation halal except for medicinal purposes. Should US and European economic measures be taken to mean that they want to narrow the Taliban movement and overthrow their government anyway?(Altaf my death)