According to certain reports, Afghanistan is classified the
source of more than 80% of the world’s opium supply, and in recent years, much
of that has been in Taliban-controlled areas
When Taliban seized control of Afghanistan earlier this
year, its leadership promised to end poppy cultivation across the country. To
back up its pledge, Taliban leadership pointed to the prohibition on opium it
imposed two decades ago when it was last in power.
Taliban will have a long way to go to make good on its commitment.
In 2020, Afghan farmers devoted their third-highest-ever acreage to opium
production, and the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime reports that the
opium trade has grown to constitute more than 10% of the country’s economy.
Much of that growth came from lands under Taliban control.
In fact, in recent years, Taliban leaders have used the opium trade as a major
revenue source, imposing an informal tax on farmers, laboratories that
converted the crop into heroin, and smugglers who transported the drugs.
Some analysts, like the International Crisis Group’s Ibraheem
Bahiss, believe that Taliban’s pledge on ending the opium trade in Afghanistan
is merely a “bargaining chip in return for international aid.” According
to the World Bank, prior to Taliban takeover such aid accounted for 43% of
Afghanistan’s GDP.
The last time Taliban took control of Afghanistan, the poppy
fields flourished. In 1999, three years after the group established its
Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the country’s total production of raw opium was
estimated to have hit nearly 4,600 tons — more than double the amount for the
year before.
Almost a quarter century later, Afghanistan continues to be
the world’s top opium producer. But since Taliban assumed power in Kabul
earlier this month, spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid has repeatedly told
international media Taliban would not allow the production of opium or other
narcotics within its state.
“Afghanistan will not be a country of cultivation of opium
anymore,” Mujahid said during a news conference on Aug. 17, two days after the
group seized the Afghan capital.
That may not be an easy task. According to another
report Afghanistan accounted for 85% of the opium produced worldwide last
year, far outdoing rival producers such as Myanmar and Mexico. The country has
also been accused of playing a major role in the global supply of cannabis and
methamphetamines.
Despite its austere version of Islamic theology and strict
enforcement of religious rules, the Taliban has long had a symbiotic
relationship with the trade in opium, which can be processed chemically to
produce narcotics such as heroin. In the 1990s, the group allowed the opium
trade even as it banned hashish and cigarettes as haram (forbidden) for
Muslims.
The group’s religious justification? Heroin largely affected
non-Muslims outside of Afghanistan.
It was a “gymnastic” interpretation of Islamic law, said
Haroun Rahimi, a legal scholar at the American University of Afghanistan. But
the group needed the support of smugglers and farmers, as well as funding, which
it could get by taxing opium production.
Taliban banned opium production in 2000 under Western pressure.
However, after the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan, production flourished
again in Taliban-held areas. Despite US-backed eradication efforts estimated to
cost US$9 billion, production peaked at an estimated 9,000 tons in 2017.
Today, Taliban face a new landscape. It is no
longer the isolated, inward-looking government that ruled between 1996 and
2001, nor the mostly rural insurgency that fought against the US-backed Afghan
government until its victory this month. It is now the de facto leader of a
desperately poor nation recovering from decades of war, with significant levels
of opioid addiction among its own citizens.
Robert Crews, an expert on Afghanistan at Stanford University,
said Taliban proclamation on opium was probably a “diplomatic overture.” “It is
aimed at demonstrating they will form a ‘responsible’ government, one that
adheres to international legal norms,” Crews said.
The poppy can grow in warm and dry climates, requiring only
a little irrigation. Resin from the plant can be refined into morphine, which
can then be processed further into heroin; both are easily transportable,
making opium an attractive crop in a country with weak infrastructure.
There is evidence of opium production in Afghanistan since
at least the 18th century, scholars have said. But the industry only began to
thrive after 1979, when the Soviet Union invaded, setting off a protracted period
of conflict in the country that has lasted almost unbroken until the present.
Before the Taliban effectively seized power in 1996, around
59 percent of global opium production was estimated by the United Nations to
be from the country. But production rose quickly under the Taliban’s auspices,
drawing international criticism.
Taliban founder Mohammad Omar banned the cultivation and
trade of opium in July 2000 and received a US$43 million grant in US
counternarcotics funding. A UN report released the following year suggested the
policy was showing signs of success.
But the US-led invasion of Afghanistan a year later upended
that. As more and more rural areas of Afghanistan fell out of government
control, poppy cultivation soared. By 2004, it had surpassed the peak of the
first Taliban era and would soon go on to double it. Efforts to end the
industry, backed by the United States, faltered.
In classified interviews published by The Washington
Post as the Afghanistan Papers, officials admitted it wasn’t just Taliban
enabling the trade.
“The biggest problem was corruption in Afghanistan, and drugs
were part of it. You couldn’t deal with one without dealing with the other,”
Douglas Wankel, a former Drug Enforcement Administration agent who led a
federal counternarcotics task force in Kabul, told government interviewers.
It’s difficult to say to what extent the opium trade has
contributed to the Taliban’s victory. Some experts argue that the funds
produced by the trade, as well as Taliban control over it, are overstated. As
the drugs have been largely exported abroad, the greatest profits have been made
by criminal cartels outside of Afghanistan.
One study released earlier this year that
estimated Taliban revenue in the opium-producing province of Nimruz found the
group raised far more money there by taxing legal sectors such as transit goods
and fuel than drugs — with US$40.9 million in taxes levied on the former and US$5.1
million on the latter in 2020.
In a sign of the shifting international drug market, the
majority of revenue from the drug industry in the province was estimated to
come from the production of methamphetamines, rather than opium, according to
the Overseas Development Institute, the British think tank that produced the
study.
David Mansfield, a British expert on Afghanistan’s informal
economy and one of the authors of the report, said his research showed the
limits of “control” in Afghanistan. “Everything is negotiated in Afghanistan
because political and military power is diffuse, even with the Taliban,” he
said.
Ibraheem Bahiss, an expert on Afghanistan with the International
Crisis Group, said Taliban’s recent statements showed it was effectively “using
narcotic eradication as a bargaining chip in return for international aid.”
While the group was estimated to have made US$39.9
million in revenue from taxes on the opium trade in 2018, the US government
has previously supplied the Afghan government with around US$500 million in
civilian aid each year.
Already blocked by the US treasury from accessing some
Afghan government funds, Taliban is likely to need all the money it can
get. So far, there has been no financial backing from the United States or
other world powers. But cracking down on the opium trade would probably give
the Taliban leverage with its neighbors such as Iran and Russia, the next stops
on the drug route, or Europe and Canada, where it often ends up in its final
form as heroin. (Most heroin in the United States comes from Mexico.)
For a group that has based much of its political legitimacy
on the strict enforcement of religious law, it would also be more consistent.
“Fundamentally, anything that harms the human body is haram [in Islamic law].
If something is prohibited, its consumption, dealing and trade are always
prohibited,” Rahimi said.
Opioid addiction has taken a toll on Afghan society. One
2015 survey concluded that there were between 2.9 million and 3.6 million drug
users in Afghanistan, with opioids being the drug of choice — an exceptionally
high level of per capita drug usage.
Just as the Afghan government struggled with these problems,
the Taliban may now too. “In many communities, opium cultivation is crucial to
survival,” Crews said, adding that there could be confrontations with Afghan growers
across the country who face economic problems because of drought and the coronavirus.
“They are harsh. They can use force,” Rahimi said, of the
Taliban. “But there is a limit to how much force they can use. … It’d be like
using force against their major base of support.”
