The Taliban have always had a complicated relationship with the opium trade. As a narcotic, opium is haram, or forbidden under Islamic law. But at the same time opium production has tended to increase in areas they have controlled, where local leaders reportedly raise money to fund their operations by imposing “taxes” on poppy farmers and others involved in the trade.
When it retook power in Afghanistan in August 2021, the Taliban leadership said it would prohibit the production of opium and duly announced the ban in April 2022. Islamic law notwithstanding, this was widely interpreted as part of the regime’s push for international recognition and the unfreezing of Afghanistan’s foreign assets – which remain subject to international sanctions.
But recent figures released by the United Nation’s Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) suggest that – thus far – the ban has been ineffective. By 2022, the area of land under opium cultivation had increased by 32%, or 56,000 hectares, compared to the previous year. The 2022 crop was the third-largest area under cultivation since UNODC began monitoring in 1994, as the graph below shows.
