According to the Global Illicit Drug Trends 2003 report, there has been an overall decrease in global heroin production. Afghanistan, however, is expecting another bumper harvest of opium poppy. The estimated output is over 4000 tons, despite crop disease in the key growing areas of Nangarhar and Kandhahar. Approximately 69,000-79,000 hectares are under cultivation with one kilogram of heroin costing $5000-$20,000 in Afghanistan, and between $70,000 and $300,000 in the international market. The UN has estimated the annual turnover from the drug trade to be about $25 billion. With its bumper harvest last year, Afghanistan regained its place as the main global producer of heroin producing 76 percent of the global production as against 12 percent in 2001. About 95 percent of heroin on London’s streets and 70 percent of Europe’s heroin and opium are from Afghanistan.

Nangarhar, Helmand and Badakshan, in that order, are the largest poppy producing areas. Nangarhar produces nearly 25 percent of Afghanistan’s opium poppy. While traditional poppy growing areas have registered a decline, probably due to crop disease and enforcement drives, poppy is being cultivated in newer areas. 17 of Afghanistan’s 32 provinces have reported a rise in opium cultivation this Spring. In April 2003, a preliminary survey conducted by the UN and the Afghan anti-narcotics division showed an increase in poppy cultivation in new areas; 80 percent of Bamiyan and much of the Ghor province, are now cultivating opium poppies.

Unlike wheat, opium requires little water and is ideally suited to arid valleys dependent on rain. The high value of the crop allows farmers, particularly returning refugees, to raise the capital for buying livestock and other inputs for farming. Years of war has reduced the agricultural infrastructure in the country to shambles, making it difficult and expensive to grow normal crops. Religion, obviously, has not deterred people from growing opium; even the local maulavi are involved in growing the banned crop.

On the flip side, drug cultivation has led to increased labour charges from $2 to $10. Labour has been diverted from other agricultural activity and critical reconstruction work has suffered for want of labour. While a labourer gets $3 after toiling for a month in the wheat fields, he earns $1.50 working in the poppy field for a day.

Anti-drug workers face stiff resistance in eradicating poppy cultivation. There are frequent clashes between drug cultivators and enforcement officials. In some villages officials were pelted with stones until they withdrew. In Oruzgan province seven officers were killed, and three wounded in one such clash. In other places, farmers have resorted to bribing officials. In Badakshan, where 75 percent of this year’s agricultural harvest is the banned crop, a farmer remarked: They (government) come by helicopter to destroy poppy, but not to bring us medicine, evaluate our needs and tackle our problems. 

In the last years of Taliban rule, drug cultivation was eliminated; 15 percent in one year, 30 percent in the next and virtually wiped out in the final year. Despite popular claims that Taliban put a stop to drug cultivation, it cannot be argued that the Taliban helped reduce the narcotic problem. Though Afghanistan’s contribution to the international heroin market was as low as 12 percent in 2001, it had touched an all time high of 79 percent in 1999, while under Taliban rule. The Taliban imposed a ban on drug cultivation, but other aspects of the trade – trafficking and marketing – continued unhindered. According to the DEA agent heading the New York division, the Taliban regime managed to collect more than $40 million annually from opium profits to fund its activities. It is believed that the Taliban, after having stockpiled 60 percent of the cultivation, issued the ban with the aim to drive up market prices. And, the prices did go up: from $35-$50 for a kilogram of opium to $550 to $600.

The government’s anti-narcotics department believes that the Taliban, now out of power, is collecting money from drug smugglers in southern Afghanistan for their attacks against US forces. It has also been reported that the Taliban is encouraging farmers to cultivate the banned crop as a jihad against the West. According to a villager, “We have been approached by Taliban clerics urging us to grow more poppy to destroy future generations in America and other Western countries.” Some analysts like Dan Plesch at the Royal United Services Institute are already alert to the situation and view the volume of drugs getting injected into Europe from Afghanistan as some form of asymmetric warfare.

In his statement at the UN Security Council meeting 4774 on the drug situation in Afghanistan, the head of the UN office on Drugs and Crime, Antonio Maria Costa, set out to qualify the problem. Despite the staggering harvest, he pointed out that less than one percent of Afghan lands cultivated opium poppies and not more than six percent of the Afghan families were involved in its cultivation. Nevertheless, he admitted that the task to rid Afghanistan of the drug economy required much greater political, security and financial capital.