According to the United Nations, this year’s harvest can be converted into 380 tons of heroin. The benefits of farmers have tripled in the last year, but that has not automatically translated into an increase in purchasing power due to the economic and humanitarian crisis. Precisely the ban on cultivating it announced by the Taliban (scarcely put into practice) was what made prices rise.
Kabul () – The cultivation of poppy for opium -principal ingredient for the production of heroin- grew almost a third since the Taliban took power in August of 2021, despite the prohibition imposed by the de facto authorities of the Emirate Islamic in April this year. On the contrary, it was precisely the announcement of the prohibition that almost doubled prices and forced the farmers – corruald by the economic and humanitarian crisis of the country, such as the rest of the population – to allocate the fields to the crop of poppy instead instead wheat.
The latest report from the United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention (UNODC), which since the 1990s has been monitoring trends in the illicit drug market, highlights this dramatic situation.
According to the document, in 2022 the land dedicated to poppy cultivation increased by 56 thousand hectares (32%) and reached a total of 233 thousand, turning the harvest this year in the third largest in history. Farmers’ revenues tripled, from $ 425 million in 2021 to 1.4 billion dollars in 2022, a figure equivalent to 29% of the agricultural sector value in 2021. But, points out, “this sum represents only one only one fraction of revenue derived from domestic production and trafficking. Much higher sums are accumulating throughout the illicit drug supply chain outside the country.”
Afghanistan covers 80% of the global demand for opiates. Poppy cultivation continues to be concentrated in the southwestern regions, where 73% of cultivated areas are located. In the province of Hilmand, for example, a fifth of the cultivable land is dedicated to opium and is subtracted – due to the highest income – to subsistence crops. According to UNODC estimates, the 2022 harvest can become up to 380 tons of heroin, whose degree of purity goes from 50% to 70%.
The sowing for the 2023 harvest must be carried out in early November (that is, in the next few days) but the farmers, who now depend on the profits from the sale of opiates -in 2021 the illicit drug trafficking represented between the 9% and 14% of Afghanistan GDP-are in a situation of great uncertainty because they do not know whether the taliban prohibition will be applied or not next year.
“Afghan farmers are trapped in the illegal opiate economy, while seizures in the country suggest the drug trade has not stopped,” said UNODC Executive Director Ghada Waly. opium, however, do not automatically translate into greater purchasing power, recalled the United Nations Development Program, because in the last year inflation has also skyrocketed and the price of food has increased by around 35%.
