Afghanistan Peace CampaignBADAKHSHAN, Afghanistan — For the past decade, Asadullah’s poppy fields offered his family something rare in Afghanistan: a reliable income.
That stability came to an abrupt end in May, when Taliban officials walked through his fields here in northeastern Afghanistan, cutting down his opium-producing flowers. It was part of a far-reaching crackdown that has ended the country’s status as the world’s top producer of the narcotic while upending the lives of the hardscrabble farmers who depend on it.
“We cultivated opium because of poverty and necessity,” said Asadullah, who is known only by his given name as is common in rural Afghanistan. “Half a kilo of opium is worth 100 seers (700 kilograms) of wheat. Now, the Taliban came and destroyed it by force.”
Afghanistan was once the world’s largest opium producer and a key cog in the global drug trade. In 2009, an estimated 90 percent of the world’s heroin was sourced from Afghan poppies.
But the situation changed dramatically when Taliban authorities announced a sweeping ban on poppy cultivation in 2022, a year after the group returned to power in Kabul as U.S. forces ended their 20-year occupation. The Taliban said the ban is for religious reasons, part of its strict Islamic worldview that forbids narcotics. But analysts point out that it’s also meant to help gain international legitimacy, unlock foreign aid and win sanctions relief.
A Holdout Province
The Taliban’s anti-drug campaign has been strikingly successful: opium production has collapsed by more than 95 percent. But Badakhshan, a remote and mountainous province that has typically been difficult to control from Kabul, has proven more challenging.
Taliban officials said they have razed 4,000 hectaresof poppy fields across Badakhshan since May. Many farmers in the area not only continue to defy the nationwide ban but have also tried to produce more.
“A very large amount has been cultivated [in Badakhshan]. Compared to previous years, cultivation has increased fivefold,” said Abdullah Habib, a Taliban official tasked with destroying poppy fields in the province.
The surge is likely being driven by economics as much as defiance. After the Taliban announced the 2022 ban, the average price for one kilogram of opium rose from$100 to more than $700 in some areas.
“We aim to reduce [poppy cultivation] to zero,” Habib said, adding that around 1,500 people have been deployed to oversee their destruction. Indeed, here in Badakhshan, it has become common to see Taliban officials moving through fields of colorful flowers, slashing them down with sickles and heavy sticks.
As Asadullah’s predicament illustrates, thousands of families depend on this crop for everything–daily expenses, healthcare and children’s education. Switching from poppies to any other crop means a sharp fall in income.
Qurban Ali is another small farmer who has spent the past decade cultivating poppies. This year, he cobbled together $2,000 to spend on the plants, expecting a hefty return on his investment—until his crop was destroyed. Now, he fears he will be reduced to a daily wage laborer, a prospect that means scraping by with $5 or $10 a day doing menial jobs like construction work or street vending.
Bashir Ahmed, another farmer, said that the real problem is that the Taliban hasn’t focused on assistance for poppy cultivators to transition to other livelihoods.
“If alternative cultivation and work opportunities are provided for our people, we will definitely stop cultivating poppies,” he said. “Poor farmers have not benefited from this; the biggest profits go to traffickers.”
Prohibition and Profit
Poppy cultivation has a long and tortuous history in Afghanistan. It has been alternately banned and utilized by the Taliban, not to mention other Afghan militias, to fund their war efforts.
The Taliban initially outlawed poppy production in July 2000, during their first stint in power. The measure was effective, but cultivation bounced back after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan and the installation of a new government backed by Washington.
Between 2002 and 2021, the United States spent roughly $9 billion on a counternarcotics campaign to fight the Taliban, which was using the proceeds from the illicit trade to finance their years-long insurgency against the U.S.
“We cultivated opium because of poverty and necessity… Now, the Taliban came and destroyed it by force.”
Despite those efforts, poppy farming persisted. According to a report by the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime, the Taliban made an estimated $61 million to $113 million in 2019 alone by taxing the opium trade.
Then, they banned it once again after returning to power.
The Cost of the Crackdown
The cash crop’s sudden disappearance has wreaked havoc on farmers. A year after the ban, in 2023, agricultural income fell more than 92 percent, from an estimated $1.36 billion to $110 million, according to a U.N. survey.
“Afghanistan’s people need urgent humanitarian assistance to meet their most immediate needs, to absorb the shock of lost income and to save lives,” Ghada Waly, the executive director of the U.N. drugs and crime office, said at the time. “Afghanistan is in dire need of strong investment in sustainable livelihoods, to provide Afghan farmers with opportunities away from opium.”
Still, social activists have championed the Taliban’s strict implementation of the ban, saying it was long overdue. They point to the major health crisis the illicit drug trade had created inside the country. According to a U.N. report from 2010, at the height of opium production, some 1 million Afghans, or 8 percent of the population, suffered from drug addiction, mostly opium and heroin. That figure was twice the global average at the time.
The problem hasn’t entirely gone away. A February 2026 UN report found that opium is still perceived as the second-most used drug in the country after cannabis, suggesting overall drug use remains high.
“In recent years, many young people have turned to using drugs, and the main reason was the increase in poppy cultivation,” said Ahmed Javid, an activist in Badakhshan.
Alongside the fight against illicit narcotics, he emphasized that farmers should be given alternative economic opportunities.
“The government must stop cultivation; however, it should provide alternative cultivation opportunities for farmers, irrigate agricultural lands, and implement more development projects so that job opportunities are created for people,” Javid said.
Taliban officials claim they are creating new sources of income for the farmers.
“We are trying to provide job opportunities in the mining sector for farmers and people so that they do not cultivate narcotics anymore,” said Habib, the official charged with destroying poppy fields.
In February, the Afghan Ministry of Mines and Petroleum said that 100,000 people were employed by the mining sector in Badakhshan, working on various projects worth 223 million afghanis ($3.4 million). While those figures are difficult to verify, the World Bank has noted that employment in Afghanistan’s mining sector has grown at an annual rate of 15 percent.
But Asadullah said he had not heard of any job opportunities in the mining sector. His fields are now empty, and he cannot plant other crops without incurring a significant loss.
“The fields where we used to cultivate opium were completely destroyed,” he said. “We were promised that alternative cultivation would be provided for us, but nothing has been done. Regarding job opportunities in the mines, we have no information at all.”
“Where should poor people like us go?” he continued. “This was our only work, and they took it away from us.”
Abdullah Badakhsh is an Afghan journalist based in Badakhshan, northeastern Afghanistan. He covers security, development, social issues and the lives of communities in remote areas. He writes under a pen name due to restrictions on the press in Afghanistan.
This article has been produced in collaboration with Egab.
