Afghan opium cultivation bouncing back amid Taliban clampdown
Al Jazeera
Poppy planting remains far below pre-ban levels, United Nations reports, despite rise of 19 percent year on year.
Afghanistan’s opium poppy cultivation grew in 2024 despite a Taliban-imposed ban, according to a United Nations report.
Cultivation increased by an estimated 19 percent this year, the report published on Wednesday by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said.
Despite the increase, the cultivation of opium poppies – the source of the raw material for much of the world’s heroin – remains well below the levels reached before the Taliban clampdown in 2022.
This year’s cultivation area amounted to just 12,800 hectares (31,629 acres), a sharp drop from the 232,000 hectares (573,284 acres) cultivated before the prohibition.
The ban on narcotic cultivation in April 2022 saw a 95 percent drop in opium farming by 2023, according to the UNODC.
