The Taliban yesterday (a) officially banned the cultivation of poppy, the raw material used to make heroin and other opioid drugs. This is part of the organization’s effort to gain international recognition as a legitimate government in Afghanistan. This, against the background of fierce international opposition to the regime that is becoming more and more Rodney towards its inhabitants.
As of today, Afghanistan is the largest opium producer in the world, and the ban fulfills an old Taliban promise to ban the trade in raw materials. Afghanistan supplies about 85 percent of the world’s opium production and last year it rose 8 percent to 6,800 tons, enough to produce up to 320 tons of pure heroin for the global market, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
The ban could undermine the livelihoods of thousands of Afghan farmers, cause them to sink deeper into a devastating humanitarian crisis and provoke outrage against the Taliban government struggling for its status.
“Afghans have been told that henceforth, poppy growing is strictly forbidden across the country,” Taliban spokesman and deputy information minister Zabiola Mujahid said at a press conference at the Interior Ministry on Sunday, reading from an order written by the organization’s supreme leader, Haibtula Ahunzadeh.
“If anyone violates the order, the crops will be destroyed immediately and the violator will be treated in accordance with Sharia law,” Mujahide said, without elaborating, referring to the laws of Shiite Islam, which the Taliban strictly interpret.
In practice, enforcement will be in the nature of a foot shot
If the new ban is enforced, it will deprive the Taliban regime of an important source of income at a time when the country is cut off from the global financial system. The ban will also undermine popular support for the organization among farmers.
“We’re all worried about the news,” said Hamidola Helmandi, a farmer growing the poppy band Band Ali, the poppy-rich Helmand district where growers are just beginning to harvest this year’s crop.
“One grower is responsible for feeding 10 families,” Helmandi said, adding that opium is the only profitable crop for him. “We do not make money from growing wheat and vegetables. They come from Iran and Pakistan, and no one buys ours,” Helmandi said.
“The Taliban are issuing orders without thinking about the local people,” he said.
The EU will cooperate with the Taliban
The press conference on Sunday was also the first time a Western official has addressed a large gathering of Taliban members since taking power in August. In a brief speech, the deputy head of the EU delegation to Afghanistan, Arnott Powells, said the EU was “willing to cooperate with the people and exchange information with the authorities” to alleviate the human suffering caused by heavy drug use in Afghanistan.
But he did not provide any hint that the international community had any intention of changing its views on the Taliban, despite the Sunday announcement. None of the EU countries recognize the Taliban government.
“The presence of a diplomat at any de facto authority event is not a sign of recognition. It is based on our involvement, on the dialogue with the de facto authorities. There is nothing more than that,” Powell clarified to reporters.
As an illegal movement, the Taliban took advantage of collecting taxes from the drug trade to fund their war against Western forces and the Afghan Republic. But as a government, members of the organization have promised to reduce trade that feeds the world’s drug markets, and is contrary to religious beliefs against the use of drugs and other intoxicants.
The Taliban are realizing an election promise that no one has asked for
Shortly after overthrowing the West-backed Afghan Republic, in August 2021, the Taliban promised to ban poppy cultivation, a declaration that caused an immediate jump in prices across the country, but the organization did not formulate the ban in a binding order and did not enforce it. Farmers continued to grow poppy without interruption by local authorities who turned a blind eye to the trade. This, even after the government in Kabul insisted that it was serious in its war against narcotic drugs.
Sunday’s announcement comes amid worldwide criticism of Taliban attacks against civilian freedoms, particularly of women. Last month, the Taliban banned women from attending middle school and high school.
Linking drug use to women’s education, Powell said: “The more the whole population, boys and girls, men and women, learn more, the better opportunities they will have in society, and the easier it will be to stay away from drugs.”
In the Taliban declaration, the organization seeks to incite the discussion on girls’ education, and “accept aid for development and weaken economic sanctions, fearing that the current economic crisis will worsen greatly. What will happen if this ban is actually implemented,” said David Mansfield, an independent socio-economist and drug trafficker In Afghanistan.
“It has to do with politics and the leverage of development aid funds,” he said.
Taliban officials say the international community has a responsibility to cooperate with them in eradicating opium from Afghanistan.
“We want the international community to bring about alternative cultivation instead of poppy, so that neighboring and foreign countries do not suffer the damage and negative effects of drugs coming from Afghanistan,” Taliban’s second deputy prime minister, Abdul Salam Hanafi, told a news conference.
The one who added weight to the Taliban’s message in the very presence was Syrajudin Hakani, the covert leader of the Hakani network, an organization in the US declared a terrorist organization for which a $ 10 million reward has been paid for its leader. Drugs in violation of the new law.
Wearing a white tunic and a black turban and wearing a long black beard he seemed uncomfortable with the Khani in front of the cameras, and he did not speak at the event. The cany rarely appears in public, and was present at its first public event ever a month ago.
Afghanistan is one of the bitter failures of the United States
The current ban echoes the previous time the Taliban banned poppy growing. The Latvian first came to power in 200 when, even then, Agnistan was in the throes of an economic crisis exacerbated by a drought and a decline in aid funds. Even then, as now, the Taliban was internationally isolated for human rights violations and women’s rights.
The ban in 2000 cut opium growth by 90 percent, some researchers said, but the poppy-growing phenomenon re-emerged immediately after the U.S. invasion that toppled the Taliban, just over a year later. Years of Western efforts to reduce drug trafficking in Afghanistan With US $ 9 billion in funding, it failed.