Afghanistan Peace Campaign
Afghanistan had four times more land under opium poppy this year than last – more than 43,000 hectares, compared with 10,000 hectares in 2025. Estimated opium production was just under 1,500 tons, a five-fold increase from about 300 tons in 2025, according to this year’s Afghanistan Opium Survey by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). The crop is concentrated in the northeast, where the land under poppy cultivation in 2026 accounted for about three-quarters of the estimated total national area. Most prominent is Badakhshan, which has become the centre of opium cultivation and production since the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) began enforcing its 2022 ban.[1] This year’s cultivation and production are still only a fraction of the pre-ban levels when Afghanistan cultivated poppy on hundreds of thousands of hectares and produced on average 6,000 metric tons of opium annually (see Graphs 1 and 2 below).
The years immediately after the ban show how unusual the latest change is. UNODC estimated that 12,800 hectares were sown with poppy in 2024, a modest increase on 2023, followed by a decline in 2025. Cultivation stayed below 13,000 hectares in all three years. The 2026 survey therefore marks the first substantial break from that range. Yet, the total area under poppy in 2026 remained far smaller than the area Helmand alone had planted in 2022.
The UNODC survey counted 16 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces at or above its 100-hectare threshold for recording cultivation in 2026, up from 11 in 2025. This is still below the 24 provinces that cultivated in the record-high year in 2017.
Even so, this year’s increase is significant because it suggests the ban is unsustainable without practical alternatives and government support. This is backed up by our interviews with farmers. The rise in cultivation in neighbouring Pakistan and Iran also shows how the high prices of opium (more on this below) are driving farmers to migrate to new territories where enforcement and governance are weak.
To understand why farmers are returning to opium cultivation despite these risks, AAN spoke to growers in Helmand, Badakhshan and Badghis, the three provinces that have seen a significant increase in cultivation as well as two Afghan farmers who migrated to grow poppy, one to Pakistan and the other to Iran.[2] The report offers an overview of what the farmers told us they planted, sold, or intended to sow and how they understood the potential rewards and risks they faced. As well as the 2026 UNDOC survey, this report draws on a new technical report, Drug production in Afghanistan and the region: Innovative monitoring to better inform policy, by the European Union Drug Agency (EUDA). What all of this information, anecdotal and scientific, tells us about the future of opium cultivation in Afghanistan and the region is discussed in the conclusion.
2026: a good harvest
In interviews in Helmand, Badakhshan and Badghis, farmers speak about a good harvest, despite eradication operations,[3] for example, some “incidents of harassment and interference by the Taliban,” as described by a farmer from Jurm in Badakhshan:
They destroyed a small portion of my crops, particularly on the part of my land located close to the road. I grew poppy in several different places, covering about seven jeribs [1.4 hectares] of land in total. More than half a jerib was destroyed. However, I was able to harvest the remaining crop.
He blamed the ‘Kandahari Taliban’ for the eradication, but also said that, in general, “dissatisfaction of the people towards the Taliban” had reduced the pressure on farmers as more people were sympathetic to any kind of resistance to the Taliban policies, including the poppy ban. “The only individuals who continue to create problems or stop us,” he said, “are non-Badakhshani Taliban and there are relatively few of them in Badakhshan.” He said he had no other option but to grow opium because jobs, whether with the government, NGOs or private companies, had all disappeared.
There are no factories or other significant employment opportunities in the province where people could earn a living and meet their needs. Before, people had jobs in government institutions, mines, foreign NGOs and companies. Most of these employment opportunities simply no longer exist. So, for us farmers, cultivating poppy is now the only option.
He also spoke about why his province in particular needed to grow poppy. “Unlike nearby provinces, Takhar or Kunduz, Badakhshan has very limited agricultural land, and much of it is not particularly fertile. Everyone has only small plots of land.” Farmland is scarce, he said, which means farmers prefer to plant a high-return crop, such as opium poppy.
He said that, usually, traders come to the villages or to farmers’ homes, with some offering cash in advance in exchange for the right to buy the opium once it is ready. “The income generated from the opium harvest, particularly when compared with the returns from other crops, helps us meet our basic needs and address some of our financial problems.” He plans to sow more this autumn, in part because the local Taliban have given him assurances that his crop would not be destroyed.
Another farmer from Badakhshan’s Argu district said that last season, he had reduced the area he sowed from 20 jeribs [4 hectares] to around 11 jeribs [2.2 hectares] because much of his land lay near the main road and the district centre and he feared eradication.
The land I’m now growing poppy on is further from the main road and the district and village centre. The overall harvest was lower than in previous years because I cultivated less land for fear the crops would be destroyed. However, the yield from the land I did grow poppy on was very good, mainly because Badakhshan received substantial rainfall this year.
However, he intended to cultivate more land this year because he thinks the political climate is more favourable and, following the unrest in Badakhshan in May and June 2026, the Taliban’s behaviour towards local people had changed. “They are now more cautious in their dealings with people,” he said, “seeking to avoid increasing public dissatisfaction and losing support.”
He also said economic activity and paid employment in Badakhshan had come to a standstill. “People largely depend on livestock farming, agriculture and some mining for their livelihoods.” But land is scarce and, for most ordinary people, access to the mining sector or other livelihood opportunities is not available.
So, despite the numerous difficulties and risks we face, including imprisonment, beating and the destruction of our farmland and crops, I and other farmers have no alternative but to continue growing poppy. It’s the only means available to us to survive, to support our families and continue living under these circumstances.
He does not intend to stop growing poppy. “The current Taliban government has neither provided alternatives nor offered any meaningful support. They’ve left people on their own. They only preach about [poppy] being haram, but provide no practical alternatives, no solutions.”
Despite these farmers reporting that they are growing less poppy and being more about careful where they sow, UNODC estimates that the area under opium poppy in Badakhshan, which has been the top-producing province since the ban, increased more than fourfold, from 6,639 hectares in 2025 to 29,482 hectares in 2026.[4] About 976 tonnes of opium, said UNODC, roughly two-thirds of Afghanistan’s estimated 1,466 tonnes yield, came from the northeast. It attributed good yields in Badakhshan to more favourable rainfall and growing conditions after the previous season’s drought. In Helmand, by contrast, water scarcity led to lower opium yields, as we will see below.
In Badghis, the area also increased four-fold, from 573 hectares in 2025 to 2,538 hectares in 2026. It accounted for about six per cent of the national total. As in every other province, the area under cultivation in Badghis was well below the land area recorded in 2022 – in Badghis’s case it was less than a fifth of the 14,110 hectares recorded there in 2022.
A farmer from Badghis’ Jawand district, like his counterparts in Badakhshan, also reduced the area under poppy from approximately 15 jeribs [3 hectares] to 5-6 [1-1.2 hectares], but said he intended to expand this autumn.
[Last year] I mixed some of the poppy seeds with rice and corn, growing them between these crops to conceal them. I cultivated the rest in gardens and courtyards. I intend to use the same method this year and will sow more poppy – I’ll grow more corn and rice and sow the poppy among these crops so that it remains hidden from view. If they investigate, I’ll say it grew naturally on its own. This method proved effective last year and none of my crops was destroyed. Most of the farmers in my area are also using this approach.
Again, the motivation was lack of alternatives. “The government has neither provided any alternative opportunities, nor offered us any assistance,” he said: “So, we have to use this method in order to grow poppy.” Another factor in protecting crops from eradication also came into play in Badghis – who you know among local power brokers: “Some of the local Taliban, as well as their relatives and friends are helping to ensure our crops aren’t destroyed.”
In Helmand, where cultivation increased more than five-fold from 681 hectares in 2025 to 3,525 hectares in 2026,[5] UNODC also found that more than 90 per cent of poppy cultivation was concealed, mainly among cereal crops or within walled areas. This was confirmed by the farmers we interviewed.
A farmer in Nad Ali district of Helmand told AAN he had sown a small patch of poppy among his wheat. “When the wheat grew, it hid the poppy plants,” he said. In neighbouring Washir, a farmer said an eradication team had sprayed the poppy he had planted among garlic in his garden, but had missed a tiny patch in one corner. “The [plants] were hardly visible,” he said. Elsewhere in the province, farmers in Marja and Musa Qala told AAN they had sown poppy in walled gardens or house compounds, but eradication teams had entered and destroyed their crops. A Nawzad farmer described another way farmers in the province had tried to avoid eradication – shifting the date that they sow.
In some places, like Nawzad and Nad Ali districts, people now sow poppy in early spring. Their aim is to protect their crops from the Taliban’s eradication campaign, which happens in winter. The poppy sown in early spring also grows well. This is a new approach by poppy farmers.
When farmers were asked why they had gone back to poppy cultivation, most of the Helmandi farmers cited debt, lack of water, or unsuccessful attempts to grow other crops. The Nad Ali farmer said he had tried alternatives for three years but had only accumulated debt because returns were insufficient to support his eight children. Last year, however, he had harvested 1.3 kilogrammes of opium from a small plot and had prepared more land, over one jerib (0.2 hectare), for next year. “Other crops … can’t make the money to feed my children for the whole year. I became indebted because the [other] crops just didn’t make enough.”
One of the farmers interviewed in Musa Qala said he had sown a tiny patch of poppy in his compound because he had too little water to grow other crops. “I wish there was a lot of water like in the past; if there had been, I swear I wouldn’t have cultivated a single plant of the poppy,” he told AAN.
In Nawzad, a farmer who has 11 children said he was in debt after last year’s wheat harvest failed: “I’d bought seeds and chemical fertiliser on loan. Even the tractor driver ploughed my land on loan.” Off the back of that disaster, he had doubled the area he was sowing with poppy this year, from half to one jerib (0.1 to 0.2 hectares).
There’s no water to grow other crops. Last year, I grew wheat, but because of lack of water, it dried up. Poppy brings a good income when it yields a good harvest. So I sowed more this year than last. How else should we eat? If the Taliban eradicate this crop or not, we’re obliged to find food for our children There is no alternative.
Eradication and a faked death
The IEA reported eradicating around 23,000 hectares of opium poppy nationwide in 2026.[6] Since most UNODC satellite images were acquired before the eradication campaign, this means that poppy on almost one-third of the crop was destroyed before it could be harvested. It also means poppy was possibly sown on more than 60,000 hectares, not the 43,000 hectares the final best estimate suggests. Enforcement, therefore, remains a substantial threat, although farmers described it as not threatening everyone; it depends on who you know.
Helmand interviewees reported eradication inside gardens and residential compounds, as well as arrests, beatings and damage to irrigation equipment. The May 2026 interview with a farmer in Washir, Helmand, shows how far eradication reached into domestic life. He recounted teams coming repeatedly to search houses and compounds. “In our district, the Taliban carried out a poppy eradication campaign each month this year. They searched for poppies in the houses and compounds. When they found them, they sprayed them to destroy them.” As mentioned earlier, his bid to hide his poppy among garlic plants failed. Just a tiny patch survived the eradicators.
Farmers in Marja and Musa Qala said the authorities were particularly strict last year after local police were caught faking eradication the year before, as a farmer from Musa Qala explained:
In some areas, some of the Taliban hadn’t destroyed the poppies. They had sympathy for the people. They put some water in the spray bottles and went to the compounds and gardens only pretending to destroy the poppies. They were good people, or maybe they were relatives of the farmers. They took pictures and made videos of it. The higher authorities knew from some of the people who’d complained that their poppies were destroyed, but others hadn’t been touched. So, the IEA transferred all of the police and the chief of district police to Marja district and brought [their police] to our district. They’re stricter than the old ones.
The farmer from Marja also said enforcement grew stricter after the exchange:
The IEA thought the police and other related authorities in Marja district wouldn’t destroy the poppy crop and would compromise with the people. … When [the Musa Qala police] arrived, they were much harder than the old police, though they had also tried their best to destroy poppies everywhere in our district.
The Marja farmer said some villagers had stopped planting after their relatives were detained. He, though, continued, despite losing crops to eradication. “I try to grow the poppies each time because there’s no other job for us. Otherwise, what should we eat?”
Our interviewee from Musa Qala described particularly harsh treatment by the eradication teams: “They came and destroyed the crop with sticks. … They entered homes and beat women and children when the women stopped them or tried to stop them from destroying the crop.”
In Nawzad, our interviewee said that poppy was eradicated everywhere in the district and that “everyone has problems with the Taliban.” Only those “with strong connections” to the authorities, he said, did not see their poppy crop eradicated. He also alleged that the Emirate damaged irrigation equipment in some place: “They removed the submersible pumps from tube wells and threw them into the wells.” The farmers responded by changing the planting season, as mentioned before.
The farmer from Nad Ali said that they had already started sowing poppy for next year – and more than last year:
The reason for sowing more is that no other crop makes enough money to support my family. Poppy is a blessed plant. It makes good money. So far, this autumn, as well, the Taliban haven’t given us warnings not to grow poppy – unlike last year and in previous years. This has also made us hopeful that they may not eradicate our crops or destroy them with chemical sprays.
The timing of these various accounts also matters. The May interviews from Helmand describe intensified searches and growers deterred from sowing in autumn 2026 by the prospect of detention. The later interviews from August and October/November describe resistance and persistence in cultivation, as well as innovative methods of concealing the crop. One outstanding example of creativity under pressure came from the farmer in Nad Ali who told the story an elderly farmer’s response when the eradication campaign approached his village: “He told his sons to wrap him in a shroud, put him on a bed and take the bed outside the compound.” They should also begin to weep, he said, when the Taliban came near. “When they saw [the sons], they let them be and this is how [the old man] saved his poppy crop.”
In Badakhshan, eradication in May and June 2026 prompted protests, with deaths and injuries reported, said UNODC, quoting Afghan media (Hasht-e Subh, Tolo News). The survey cites accounts of people objecting to the methods used by the eradicators as well as damage to other crops and property during the operation. In its response to the survey, the Emirate’s counter-narcotics directorate said eradication was carried out under a mandatory order. It also disputed reports that farmers in Badakhshan were harmed or that their licit crops had been damaged.
The Argu and Jurm interviewees gave their own reading of the unrest. Both thought local officials had become more cautious in their dealings with residents. The Jurm farmer distinguished between local Taliban and men sent from elsewhere, whom he considered more likely to intervene. (For a more detailed account of the dynamic between local Taliban and those sent from other provinces to Badakhshan, see this AAN report from 2025.)
Growing poppy across the border
Migration has emerged as another response to losing livelihoods, as a farmer from Marja whom we interviewed in August, as he prepared to leave for Pakistan, explained his reasons: “There are no jobs here in Helmand. What should the people do and what should they eat?” People, he said, considered it “better to die on the way to somewhere than to die from hunger at home.” Although other interviewees said rumours of a more relaxed enforcement environment at home were causing some prospective migrants to reconsider crossing the border this year, some farmers have already relocated to Pakistan. Our report from February 2025 showed that Afghan farming expertise, traders’ capital and established markets have already helped cultivation shift across the border, echoing a pattern seen after the Taliban’s first poppy ban in 2000-01 (AAN). The latest UNODC Afghanistan survey, although it does not estimate cultivation outside Afghanistan, points to a sharp rise in reported opium poppy eradication in Pakistan, from 16 hectares in 2021 to 286 hectares in 2022, 337 hectares in 2023, and 745 hectares in 2024, the latest year for which the survey gives figures. The report suggests that the increase in cultivation in Pakistan, evidenced by increased eradication, may have corresponded to Afghanistan’s 2022 ban.
In November 2026, we interviewed an Afghan farmer who has been growing poppy in Pakistan for the past three seasons in the Baloch tribal area. “Poppy is cultivated everywhere in Balochistan – except near Quetta [the provincial capital] – because it is insecure.” As to the crop, he said, “It is usually very good quality.” Last year, he said, he grew poppies in Dalbandin district, but the crops were affected by disease and he did not get a good harvest or much benefit from it. But this year, he sowed poppy in both Dalbandin district and Gulistan, an area in Kila Abdullah district of Balochistan [a Pashtun-dominant area near Spin Boldak]. He said that all of the sharecroppers who worked the land he had leased were Afghans from Helmand. “I give them a one-third share of the harvest,” he said, “I pay them money and give them living expenses until the harvest. In the end, they have to pay me back.”
In both Dalbandin and Gulistan, he said the Afghans leasing land “pay money not to the police, but to the local tribal elders.” The tribal elders then pay some of the money to the police so that they don’t come to the fields to eradicate the poppies. As for those who don’t pay, the farmer said, “their crops get eradicated.”
He said he would return to Afghanistan once poppy cultivation was allowed again. “Some people grow the poppy away from the eyes of the Emirate police, but they don’t farm a huge area. That doesn’t work for me. If it was allowed, I’d definitely go back and grow it. I have enough land [in Afghanistan] to grow poppy on.”
Although Iran largely suppressed domestic opium poppy cultivation after the 1979 revolution, this year, field research and satellite imagery published by David Mansfield and Alcis documented large, drip-irrigated poppy plots in Sistan Baluchistan, where they said some Afghan farmers had relocated since the IEA’s 2022 ban. Iranian MP Mohammad Jamalian told Mehr News Agency in June 2026 that the area under poppy had risen “from around 9,345 hectares … to around 32,000 hectares” between the 2023–24 and 2024–25 growing seasons (Axar). An official from Iran’s Drug Control Agency, Muhammad Tarahomi, disputed this, saying the 32,000 hectares referred to land where poppy had been eradicated (Magiran). It remains unclear how much poppy has been cultivated in Iran this year.
We heard from another farmer from Nad Ali district of Helmand, who is now living in Khash in Iran’s Sistan Baluchistan, where he works as a sharecropper. He told AAN that poppy is grown in southwest Iran, including Shiraz in Fars province and Zahedan and Iranshahr in Sistan Baluchistan. The sharecropper had left Nad Ali about a year and a half ago. In his village, he has three jeribs (0.6 hectares), including the land his house stands on, but there is too little water to irrigate his wheat crop. He said he had tried to find work in Kandahar city: “I could find one day’s work a week, which wasn’t enough even to pay for my food and the rent.” When his savings ran out, after a month, he and another villager decided to leave for Iran. They travelled through Nimruz and reached Khash in Sistan Baluchistan after about 12 days. People from their village who were already there helped them find land to sharecrop. In their first season, they planted four jeribs (0.8 hectares) of poppy. Half the crop dried out, but he said the remaining two jeribs yielded 25 kilogrammes of opium, and traders were coming to buy it.
We sold it for a comparatively good price. We sold one kilo for 225 million Iranian toman [USD 1025] to a trader who came here from Tehran. A kilo of opium was selling for 125-225 million [USD 570-1,025] in Tehran last year, but 90 million [USD 410] here in Khash. Now, a kilo costs 75 to 80 million [USD 340-360].
As is the case in Pakistan, the landowner covers food and living expenses and the sharecropper repays them from his share of the harvest. “When I first came here,” he said, “I saw only three other poppy farmers, but this year, many more came.” He also explained why most Afghans work as sharecroppers in Iran: “The local people don’t have the expertise. Still, Afghans rarely rent land for cultivation. They’re afraid of the Iranians. They fear they’ll regret renting them the land when the poppy harvest season comes. This has happened to some people.”
Out-migration to Iran was increasing, he said. “Our fellow villagers are still coming to Iran. Many have called me to find them land to sharecrop. I tell them it’s late! They’d better have told me a month before.” This year, he and his fellow villagers have sown 12 jeribs (2.4 hectares) of land in Khash. He planned to visit home to see his nine children after the 2027 harvest and then return to Iran to work. His land at home was not enough to support his children with licit crops. “If poppy was allowed, I’d definitely grow it there,” he said. “Then I wouldn’t need to come here … away from my family and country.”
Prospects for next year’s crop: prices and stockpiles
The price of dry opium has fallen slightly, but is still very high by historic standards – which will help to push farmers to sow poppy. UNODC’s survey shows prices falling from around USD 570 a kilo in 2025 to around USD 500 in 2026, still far above the pre-ban price of less than USD 100. There are significant regional variations in price, something which, UNODC said, could incentivise traders to buy in one region and sell in another. It found the 2026 seasonal trader price in the northeast to be about USD 310 per kilo, far lower than the USD 590 paid in the southwest. The Jurm farmer also said that some of the buyers offering the best prices in his area came from Nimruz, Farah and Helmand. He said the price of opium generally ranges from 19,000 to 21,000 afghanis (USD 290–320) per kilo, depending on its quality.
A Helmand trader told AAN in August 2026 that new opium was selling for 250,000 to 300,000 Pakistani rupees per man (equivalent to USD 205 to 250 per kilogram), down from 400,000 to 500,000 (USD 330 to 410 per kilogram) last year. He linked the fall in price to news of the large harvest in Balochistan, a view shared by the Washir farmer. This suggests that traders willing to travel and with more supply sources have more bargaining power and can offer lower prices. UNODC estimated the total value of the 2026 Afghanistan harvest based on first-level trader sales,[7] at around USD 525 million.
The importance of traders in setting prices was described by the Nawzad farmer, who pointed to the link between falling prices and enforcement action against traders in Badakhshan and Helmand: “When some of the traders were buying poppy in our district, the Taliban came. The traders escaped on their motorbikes and the Taliban followed and shot at them. Some of the traders were injured. Because of this kind of punishment, poppy prices fell.”
The farmer in Badghis said the price there was only around 17,000 to 18,000 afghanis (USD 260–280), depending on the quality. The farmer in Nawzad had sold his opium for 100,000 Pakistani rupees (USD 345) per kilo. In Nad Ali, the farmer had sold a kilo of opium for Pakistani rupees 90,000 (USD 320). His field yielded only 1.3 kilograms of poppy last year. Nevertheless, he was pleased with the harvest.
Only a few farmers can afford to wait, as the farmer in Argu could, for prices to rise. He sold only a part of his opium after harvest for 17,500 afghanis (USD 270) and stored the remainder, which he plans to sell at a higher price of 21,000 afghanis (USD 320). Most farmers have little room to choose when or to whom to sell because of existing debt.
There is also the question of how any stockpiles will affect supplies and prices. The European Union Drug Agency’s (EUDA) technical report, Drug production in Afghanistan and the region: Innovative monitoring to better inform policy, describes large inventories accumulated before the ban, particularly in the southwest, as one reason why a decrease in cultivation did not immediately translate into an equivalent fall in heroin availability further down the supply chain. UNODC also considers the release of stocks a likely explanation for the relatively stable heroin prices down the supply chain during the period of very low production, but notes that those stocks may now be depleting. Depletion of stockpiles could further increase prices and encourage mass poppy cultivation in Afghanistan. In illicit foreign markets, this could raise the risk of heroin being replaced by highly potent synthetic opioids, as is already happening in some parts of Europe, namely in the Baltic states.
As to Afghan thoughts about stockpiles, one Helmandi trader told AAN, “Old opium? No one smells it here,” meaning no one wants to buy it. The question, then, is how important any remaining stockpiles are to local Afghan trade and/or whether they are earmarked to supply markets in the region or beyond. As EUDA, pointed out: “Taliban drug bans have reshaped, rather than removed, production, processing and storage, complicating monitoring and early warning.”
What to expect next year?
For Afghan farmers now deciding how much land to sow with poppy, the price a trader has offered after last year’s harvest and the farmer’s own judgement of the likelihood or hope that a crop will survive the threat of eradication in 2027 matter more than the size of inventories others may still possess.
The plans of the farmers interviewed for this report hinge on interpreting signals from local officials and getting favourable weather – enough rainfall and mild weather. The prospects for the 2027 harvest, nationally, will depend on access to irrigation water or rainfall, what authorities do in the fields and what farmers decide they can afford to risk. It will be the aggregate of many individual decisions and developments. All our interviewees face the same uncertainty over how much to sow, but all plan to sow more poppy this autumn, or have already done so.
Last year’s decisions are visible in national figures, while our interviews reveal how much uncertainty each farmer carries into this new season. For the Nawzad farmer, the decision to cultivate poppy has come after a failed wheat crop left him in debt for seed, fertiliser and ploughing. For the farmer from Nad Ali, now working in Iran, it came after his wheat crop had failed and after a month in Kandahar yielded too little work to cover the costs of his stay, let alone send money home to his family. The man from Nawzad had sown more poppy at home. The man from Nad Ali had gone abroad, where the same skills earned him a very profitable share of another man’s harvest. In both cases, the available alternatives had already been exhausted.
It is this lack of alternatives that will most probably continue to be a decisive factor in more farmers returning to opium cultivation despite the risks of strict enforcement hanging over their heads. For the Emirate, there will be questions about what response to take: ease the ban in the face of farmers’ distress, secure much-needed aid at the expense of making political compromises or continue to enforce the ban even more heavy-handedly. All actions come with risks, some economic, others political, from deepening rural poverty and alienating farming communities to straining relations within the movement to worsening (if that were possible) its relations with the rest of the world.
Edited by Kate Clark and Roxanna Shapour
References
| ↑1 | On the announcement of the poppy ban, see: Jelena Bjelica and Kate Clark, The New Taleban’s Opium Ban: The same political strategy 20 years on?, AAN, 14 April 2022 and Jelena Bjelica and Fabrizio Foschni, Taleban Bans on Drugs: What is the Emirate’s counter-narcotics agenda?, AAN, 15 June 2023.
On the 2023 harvest, see: Kate Clark and Jelena Bjelica, Prosperity or Penury: The political and economic fallout of the opium ban in Afghanistan, AAN, 15 November 2023. On the 2024 harvest, see: Ali Mohammad Sabawoon and Jelena Bjelica, The Opium Ban: The impact on small farmers, sharecroppers and labourers in Helmand province, AAN, 14 March 2024 and Jelena Bjelica and Fabrizio Foschni, Opium Cultivation in Badakhshan: The new national leader, according to UNODC, AAN, 13 November 2024. On the 2025 harvest, including by Afghan farmers in Pakistan, see: Jelena Bjelica and Nur Khan Himmat, Migrating Poppy Cultivation: Afghan poppy farmers in Balochistan, AAN, 23 February 2025 and Fabrizio Foschni and Jelena Bjelica, The Fourth Year of the Opium Ban: An update from two of Afghanistan’s major poppy-growing areas, AAN, 27 June 2025. |
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| ↑2 | In late October/early November 2026, AAN interviewed farmers in the districts of Nad Ali and Nawzad (Helmand), Jurm and Argu (Badakhshan) and Jawand (Badghis), along with one Afghan opium farmer who had rented land in Pakistan and one Afghan opium sharecropper in Iran.
Additional testimony about eradication, prices and cultivation trends came from three interviews with farmers in the districts of Marja, Musa Qala and Washir (Helmand), conducted in May 2026 and in August 2026, two more interviews with farmers in Marja and Nad Ali (Helmand) and an interview with an opium trader in Helmand. Relevant media reporting is also referred to. |
| ↑3 | Eradication was carried out by the Emirate’s security forces, including counter-narcotics police, while military forces were also documented confronting resistance to the eradicators in Badakhshan. A separate instruction placed explicit limits on the role of Vice and Virtue enforcers (muhtasebin). A letter issued by Kandahar’s Vice and Virtue Directorate to its Ghorak district office on 31 March 2026 prohibited them from entering homes or gardens to conduct searches, either independently or alongside other authorities. The instruction may have sought to curb intrusive searches and reduce friction with residents in the Taliban heartland of Kandahar, although neither the letter nor available reporting establishes whether a specific complaint prompted it. |
| ↑4 | Badakhshan accounted for about 68 per cent of Afghanistan’s total poppy area and roughly 69 per cent of the national increase in 2026 (UNODC). |
| ↑5 | Helmand ranked second after Badakhshan in the size of area under cultivation and accounted for about 8 per cent of Afghanistan’s total poppy area. Even after the increase in production in 2026, cultivation was still less than 3 per cent of the 122,045 hectares recorded in Helmand in 2022, UNODC found. |
| ↑6 | Annex 3 (p48) of the survey, which contains official responses of the IEA’s counter-narcotics deputy minister to the UNODC’s findings, said: “the Counter-Narcotics Deputy Ministry eradicated approximately 23,000 hectares of opium poppy fields by conducting … eradication operations at heavy human and financial cost, leaving only a very small area harvested.” UNODC said it could not independently verify the figure. |
| ↑7 | The UNODC survey said (p26):
Of note, this year’s estimate, like last year’s, is derived from the first-level trader sales of opium and not farmgate prices. Farmgate prices have not been obtained since 2023 due to the reduced production in recent years but have been closely correlated with first-level trader prices in the years prior to the 2022 drugs ban. The first-level trader price was used to derive a total for 2026 that is of the same order of magnitude as the total farming income estimates in the years before the ban, which usually ranged from USD 350 to 600 million. |