Opium population cultivation in Afghanistan has increased this year at an average of a third, according to the United Nations drug office on Tuesday, in its first report dealing with this issue since the Taliban took power in 2021.
Afghanistan has the greatest opium population in the world, and both its production and exports have grown recently. Opium is used to make heroin.
The Taliban outlawed poppy planting in April, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, but the crop this year was mostly spared from the restriction. The UN agency added that the cultivation of opium population in Afghanistan increased by 32 percent compared to the previous year to 233 thousand hectares, making the crop in 2022 the third product of the largest cultivated area since the start of the monitoring process in 1994.
Agriculture-related larning areas were only noted in 2018 and 2019. According to the Vienna-based United Nations Office, the opium population crop in 2022 was also “the most lucrative years.”
According to the research, opium sales increased farmers’ revenue from 425 million dollars in 2021 to $1.4 billion in 2022, a more than threefold rise.
In this context, the agency indicated that Afghan farmers will now decide in early November whether they will grow poppy for the next year and the agricultural spaces designated for that despite the ban, adding that they are “trapped in the illegal opium economy. ”
According to the report, despite the de facto powers’ ban on growing, “the prices of the current opium currently provide an additional incentive for farmers to take a chance on its production.
After drought at the start of the year impacted crops, production had dropped to 6,200 tonnes, or 10%, from what it was in 2021.
According to the United Nations, Afghanistan virtually controls the production of opium and heroic, which account for between 80 and 90 percent of global output.
While they spent two decades in Afghanistan, American and NATO soldiers made an effort to restrict the growing of poppies and urge farmers to switch to other crops like wheat or saffron.
However, experts claim that the Taliban blocked their attempts to seize control of the key cultivation regions for the drug, which attracted hundreds of millions of dollars.
United Nations: Afghanistan’s opium cultivation is thriving, with prices skyrocketing.
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