After the withdrawal of the USA: Drug production in Afghanistan declines massively

The Afghan government, led by the Taliban, has achieved surprisingly great success in combating poppy cultivation. With its juice, opium poppy provides opium as a raw material for the production of heroin. The Western press cannot help but recognize the success, but knows that it helps Russia in the first place.

The Taliban's proclamation of war on poppy cultivation and heroin production is showing impressive success. The cultivation of poppies and other opium-containing crops in Afghanistan has declined massively within a year.

For example, according to satellite imagery from the British company Alcis, the area dedicated to poppy cultivation in the southern province of Helmand, where most of Afghanistan's drug production used to take place, has shrunk from over 120,000 hectares in April 2022 to less than 1,000 hectares a year later. The situation is similar in Nangarhar province, another drug-producing region. There, as can be seen from the satellite images, only 865 hectares are planted with poppies, also a massive decrease from more than 7,000 hectares in 2022.

All this is a consequence of the Taliban's war on drugs, which, according to analysts, has been made a condition for China and Russia to recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government of the country. Anti-poppy units patrol the country and destroy poppy fields.

The Taliban declared war just over a year ago – in the spring of 2022, when they imposed a nationwide ban on poppy cultivation and heroin production.

Even if the results in other provinces are less impressive, especially in the hard-to-reach mountainous regions, Afghanistan is still well on its way to overcoming its dubious traditions of opium production. The Economist quotes David Mansfield, a scholar who has studied Afghanistan's illicit economy for over 25 years, as predicting that poppy production in Afghanistan will decline by 2022 percent between 2023 and 80. Other estimates even predict a decline of 90 percent.

The Telegraph calls this "the most successful drug response in human history."

When the Taliban took power, Afghanistan produced 85 percent of the world's opium. According to United Nations estimates, the harvest and related drug trafficking in 2021 brought the country a total revenue of $1.8 billion to $2.7 billion. This corresponded to up to 14 percent of Afghanistan's gross domestic product. Around 450,000 Afghans were employed in the opium trade.

It is no wonder that the Taliban expect more from China and Russia than just commitments. Afghanistan must be built up in such a way that it can feed and develop without poppy cultivation. So far, the Afghan government has managed to maintain trade and key mineral exports, stabilize the Afghan economy, significantly reduce corruption in taxes and tariffs, and thus generate annual revenues of about $2 billion, praises the US news magazine Time.

However, this alone is not enough to ensure the reconstruction and development of the country, which has been marked by decades of war and civil war. As economist Bill Byrd, quoted by Time magazine, put it, the Taliban's economic stabilization is a "hunger balance." 90 per cent of the population still live in poverty and are dependent on humanitarian aid. This aid has declined rapidly in 2023 – by at least $1 billion from the $3 billion that had been allocated in 2022.

So the world can be curious to see what China and Russia, and possibly also Iran, will do to ensure that they do not miss the unique opportunity to stabilize a region in which everyone except London and Washington has a great interest today. A wide range of projects are already being considered in the areas of infrastructure development, the promotion of agriculture, industrialisation and the exploitation of Afghanistan's natural resources. Among other things, Russia is interested in reliable north-south corridors for its oil and gas. Pakistan and India would benefit.

Significantly, the British and US press are not at all happy about the progress the Taliban is making in combating poppy cultivation. Time fears that users in North America and Europe will replace heroin loss with more use of fentanyl and other synthetic drugs. Fentanyl, in particular, appears to be even more deadly than heroin and other opiates already are.

The Mexican cartels, Time magazine laments, as the main players in the trade of fentanyl to North America, have set up new smuggling and retail networks, as well as centers for the production of synthetic drugs in Western Europe. So far, the laboratories have produced methamphetamine – "the world's most potent meth" – but they can easily switch to producing fentanyl. Due to the high efficiency of fentanyl in relation to weight, Chinese drug traffickers could also ship fentanyl directly to Europe.

But that is no longer the problem of China or Russia. It is no big secret that the US and Britain have used Afghan drugs as a weapon especially against the Russian people. U.S. military-supported, even organized, smuggling through the Central Asian bases has been uncovered several times. RT DE put it in a less conspiracy theory way in an article in April of the current year:

"Although Washington had control of the country and the Afghan government for two decades, it not only failed to restrict the cultivation and export of Afghan opium, but even oversaw an increase in production."

This has cost Russia the lives of tens of thousands of young men, and the birth cohorts between 1980 and 1990 were decimated particularly severely. The end of this national tragedy is foreseeable and Russia will do everything possible to ensure that it never happens again.

China, on the other hand, has its own experience with opium dealers from the West residing in palaces there and the tragic consequences for its own people. It probably doesn't mind the boomerang returning to the cynical genocidal planners and drug dealers in London and Washington.

Read more of GR Analysis