The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) issued a news release on Sunday, November 5, 2023, reporting that Afghanistan's opium poppy cultivation decreased by 95 percent during the one-year period between April 2022 (when the ruling Taliban imposed a new ban on drugs) and April 2023.
The UNODC's Afghanistan opium survey 2023, dated August 2023, is available here.
The release states, "Opium cultivation fell across all parts of the country, from 233,000
hectares to just 10,800 hectares in 2023. The decrease has led to a
corresponding 95 per cent drop in the supply of opium, from 6,200 tons
in 2022 to just 333 tons in 2023."
Eleven years ago, I took an online graduate course on Research Methods in Security and Intelligence Studies through the American Public University System (APUS), for which I wrote a paper entitled "Displacing Afghanistan's Poppy Crop." In that paper, I described the various efforts American and other Western military forces and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) had employed to displace opium production -- including outright eradication of the opium poppy crop, substitution of other crops for opium poppies, etc. -- and the resources devoted to those efforts. Despite the determined effort and extensive resources devoted by the US and its allies between 2001 and 2012, the only significant decrease in opium poppy cultivation had occurred in 2001 when the Taliban imposed an earlier ban on drugs.
The news release notes the humanitarian stresses placed on Afghanistan's society by the sudden contraction in its economy. The release notes, "Farmers’ income from selling the 2023 opium harvest to traders fell by
more than 92 per cent from an estimated US$1,360 million for the 2022
harvest to US$110 million in 2023." Not surprisingly, “Today, Afghanistan’s people need urgent humanitarian assistance to meet
their most immediate needs, to absorb the shock of lost income and to
save lives,” Ms. [Ghada] Waly [UNODC Executive Director] added. “And over the coming months, Afghanistan is
in dire need of strong investment in sustainable livelihoods, to
provide Afghan farmers with opportunities away from opium.”
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
The US and its allies are now more than two years out of Afghanistan and the Taliban is back in power. Without a secure and stable civil society in place, including a robust legal economy with alternative sources of income to replace (or at least mitigate the loss of) opium poppy related income, the Taliban's successful contraction of the opium poppy crop will likely only result in greater civil unrest and instability as rural Afghans grow increasingly desperate to feed their families.
