A Familiar Cycle: War, Power, and Opium in the Mountains of Badakhshan

In the year following the declaration on The Prohibition of Poppy Cultivation and All Types of Narcotics in April 2022, the Taliban’s military crackdowns eradicated 95% of Afghanistan’s opium trade, along with 450,000 jobs and $1.36 billion in smallholder revenues. At this time, opium accounted for nearly a third of Afghanistan’s entire agricultural output, and around half of poppy farming household incomes. The destruction of Afghanistan’s most profitable industry in the name of ideology – without any legal alternatives or economic safeguards – left 20 million at risk of famine in a country on the brink of collapse. While the Taliban framed their prohibition as a religious imperative, the decision reflects a deeper contradiction: their ideological rejection of modernity has left them unable to implement the very reforms necessary to sustain the opium ban.

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