Autore: Patrizia Fabbri

The intensification of heroin trafficking from Afghanistan affects the politics and economy of the entire region and has created a new narco-elite that enriches itself while the population’s poverty grows.

Economically, Afghanistan is like a black hole emitting waves of insecurity and chaos in a region already beset by multiple crises. The country’s infrastructure is in ruins. Essential public services found in any underdeveloped country do not exist here.

There is no running water, electricity, phone networks, or passable roads.

Thus, it is difficult to quantify the exact number of addicts. In 2005, there were about 200,000 opium addicts. By 2009, this number had risen to one million (a figure that, according to the UN, included about 3% of Afghan women), and by 2015, the figure ranged between 1.9 and 2.4 million. “Out of 40 million inhabitants, 3.5 million abuse drugs,” stated Mohammad Daoud Jaihon, the director of Jandalak Hospital in eastern Kabul, specialized in rehabilitating addicts, in April 2022.

According to estimates by the Afghan Ministry of Public Health, by the end of 2022, the number of female addicts was close to one million, and that of boys and girls over 100,000. The main reasons women fall into addiction are economic conditions and lack of employment. The precariousness makes them unable to fight for their lives or provide for their families, and the easiest way is to use substances. In many cases, it is the husbands who introduce them to drugs. Mothers who have used drugs during pregnancy often give drugs to their children to calm them when they cry. Thus, these children become addicted from a young age.

The data on males is equally alarming: mainly men and boys use Tramadol and Captagon, the jihadists’ drug, an amphetamine that eliminates fatigue and fear.

These are the facts. But what is the Taliban’s policy on drugs? One should not be misled by recent news from Afghanistan about a drastic reduction in opium cultivation: the Taliban, from their inception, have financed themselves through “taxes” on opium cultivation and amphetamine production and continue to do so, skillfully using market laws.

A bit of history: In 1989, as soon as the Red Army withdrew, Mullah Akhundzada realized that the heroin trade needed to be controlled. He imposed opium cultivation in the Helmand Valley: anyone who opposed it by continuing to grow pomegranates or wheat with state subsidies would be castrated. The result was the production of 250 tons of heroin. Akhundzada, today considered the major Taliban leader, is one of the most important traffickers in the world.

In 1997, the UNDCP (United Nations Drugs Control Programme) concluded an agreement with the Taliban, who agreed to eliminate opium poppy cultivation provided the international community supplied the money to help farmers transition to alternative crops. They committed to supporting the introduction of new commercial crops, improving irrigation, building new factories, and covering the costs of the new policy.

But the agreement was never implemented by the Taliban, and in 1998, after the UN agencies left Afghanistan, it was simply shelved. Taxes on opium exports became the Taliban’s main revenue and the main support for their war economy. In 1995, UNDCP estimated that drug exports from Pakistan and Afghanistan brought in 50 billion rupees (1.35 billion dollars) a year; by 1998, the value of heroin exports had doubled, reaching 3 billion dollars.

In 2000-2001, to ingratiate themselves with the international community that branded Taliban-ruled Afghanistan as a hub of Islamic terrorism, the Taliban imposed a drastic reduction in opium production, causing heroin prices to soar; since production had spiked in previous years (see graph), the Taliban could still secure large profits by selling stocks at new market prices.

It is therefore highly likely that history is repeating itself today.

After taking Kabul, the Taliban announced a program to eradicate poppy cultivation and promote mass detoxification, but according to the 2022 Opium Cultivation in Afghanistan report published by the United Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC): “Opium cultivation in Afghanistan increased by 32% compared to the previous year, up to 233,000 hectares, making the 2022 harvest the third largest cultivated area since monitoring began. Cultivation continued to concentrate in the southwestern parts of the country, which accounted for 73% of the total area and saw the largest increases in harvest. In Helmand province, a fifth of arable land was dedicated to opium poppy.”

In April 2022, they announced a ban on cultivation (but not the destruction of the “mega” 2022 harvest, nor was its processing and trade prohibited): opium prices skyrocketed, and its sales yielded from 425 million dollars in 2021 to 1.4 billion dollars in 2022 (equivalent to 29% of the value of Afghanistan’s entire agricultural sector in 2021).

The reduction in cultivation is confirmed by the latest UNODC report (June 2023): “The 2023 opium harvest in Afghanistan could see a drastic drop following the national drug ban, as early reports suggest reductions in poppy cultivation.” But the same report warns about the real intention to eradicate drug trafficking: “Afghanistan is also a major producer of methamphetamines in the region, and the decline in opiate cultivation could lead to a shift towards synthetic drug production, benefiting various actors.”

Additionally, our sources in Afghanistan, besides highlighting how this “reduction,” primarily motivated by the search for international recognition, guarantees the Taliban the same high earnings from past years due to price increases, inform us that not all of the 2022 production has been placed on the market and substantial stocks will allow dollars to flow into Taliban coffers for a long time.

Afghanistan is facing an unprecedented humanitarian crisis; the convergence of conflicts and climate risks further exacerbates the population’s food and economic insecurity. On one hand, the country has been enduring over 40 years of armed conflict, primarily fueled by regional and global powers vying to extend their influence over this geostrategically significant territory. On the other hand, the situation is worsened by the effects of climate change, highlighting another profound injustice: despite having contributed minimally to global climate change—an Afghan produces on average 0.2 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year, compared to nearly 16 tons for the average American—Afghanistan is experiencing a temperature increase above the global average.

The country is ranked among the most vulnerable in the world to climate change due to a combination of low adaptive capacity—i.e., the ability to prevent or minimize environmental damage—and high exposure to climate impacts. In 2022 alone, 228,000 people were affected by sudden and violent climatic events. Women, children, and rural communities living in the most remote areas are most exposed to these risks.

The consequences include the acceleration of the social crisis with further violence, fanaticism, land and water resource wars, and mass migrations: for over 40 years, millions of Afghan citizens have been fleeing.

Nearly 4 million internally displaced people live in refugee camps, deprived of the most basic services. Recent analyses suggest that another 5 million people could be forced to migrate from Afghanistan due to climate disasters alone by 2050.

Floods and landslides are a frequent natural hazard in Afghanistan. Intense rainfall events have increased by 10 to 25% over the past 30 years. At the same time, Afghanistan is grappling with one of the worst droughts it has ever seen. According to the UN, this could turn from a sporadic event into an annual occurrence by 2030. The main irrigation systems depend on the amount of snow that falls during the previous winter on the Hindu Kush mountains or the central highlands. In the long term, the loss of glaciers could radically compromise the region’s water and hydroelectric supply. Their shrinkage, a phenomenon common globally, and rising temperatures have much graver consequences for Afghanistan than elsewhere, with over 75% of the country’s total surface experiencing desertification. This means less than a third of the population has access to clean drinking water; thousands of children die every year due to contamination and poor sanitary conditions.

Water distribution is also hindered by poor management and infrastructure deficiencies, considering that only a small percentage of investments in Afghanistan were directed to the sector during the NATO occupation. At the same time, bombings and Taliban attacks on facilities to terrorize the population have destroyed the irrigation network built by farmers using ancient methods.

The social consequences of this situation are even more severe when considering that 80% of the population depends on agriculture for subsistence, and wheat cultivation is highly susceptible to water scarcity. These crops are being replaced by opium poppy fields, which are much more drought-resistant and a crucial funding source for the Taliban.

Beyond environmental causes, thousands of farmers in 2021 alone were unable to plant their annual crops due to fighting; half of those planted were lost, and the price of wheat rose by 25%.

The interaction between climate change, humanitarian catastrophe, and the absence of governance over these phenomena drives people to join the Taliban militias and towards radicalization, in a devastating spiral for the country.

Discrimination against women and girls exacerbates their vulnerability: impoverished farmers sell livestock and marry off young daughters in exchange for money to feed the rest of the family or repay debts. Drought renders land infertile, and floods sweep away homes and possessions, reducing agricultural productivity and pushing men to migrate to urban areas in search of work. Women have to care for the family but face increased risks of domestic violence, sexual harassment, trafficking, and early and forced marriages, along with numerous restrictions on their freedom, from movement to education and employment opportunities.

For over two decades, Afghanistan has held a grim record: most refugees registered by the United Nations came from this country, a territory squeezed between cumbersome neighbors, ecologically fragile, culturally hybrid, but perceived as stagnant.

This “record” later shifted to Syrians devastated by civil war, but Afghans never stopped emigrating, as evidenced by some 2020 reports, the UNHCR “Global Trends” report, and recent statements by UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, who stated, “The crisis of forced migrations from Afghanistan is one of the largest and most prolonged in UNHCR’s seven-decade history.” Today, about 2.7 million Afghan refugees live abroad, while another 2.6 million are internally displaced, forced to leave their homes due to insecurity, natural disasters, poverty, or choice. Afghanistan remains the second-largest source of refugees worldwide.

In 2012, a tripartite agreement between Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran, mediated by the United Nations, aimed to promote the voluntary return of most Afghans. Thanks to the UN, about 5.3 million people have returned since 2001. However, many remain abroad despite the “Solutions Strategy for Afghan Refugees,” the tripartite agreement. The Joint Way Forward agreement, signed between the European Union and the Kabul government in Brussels in October 2016, provides for the return—even forced—of all Afghans whose asylum requests are rejected by member countries. Europe conditioned the allocation of millions of euros in development aid on the acceptance of repatriations and found an ally in Turkey, which began mass deportations of Afghans in 2018 without seeking assistance from the International Organization for Migration.

According to a report published in November 2019 by the Afghanistan Human Rights and Democracy Organization (AHRDO), 19,390 Afghans were sent back by EU countries between 2015 and 2017, about half of them forcibly. Eurostat indicates that in 2019, 26,900 orders to leave the EU were issued to Afghan citizens. From January 1 to mid-April 2019, 4,219 Afghans were forcibly repatriated from the EU and Turkey (most—3,560—from Turkey).

Regarding the situation after the Taliban took power, the International Rescue Committee’s May 2023 report accused EU leaders of “astonishing negligence” towards Afghan refugees, many of whom remain trapped in “prison-like” conditions on Greek islands. “Afghans now represent the third-largest refugee population globally, and the resettlement needs of Afghan refugees in the EU area have rapidly increased, almost tripling year on year, from 96,000 in 2022 to over 273,000 in 2023.” In the early months, there was a strong commitment from EU countries to help at-risk Afghans access protection pathways to Europe, but today, according to IRC, these commitments “are falling short, with 271 Afghan refugees resettled in the EU last year, meeting less than 0.1% of the current need.”

However, cities in Afghanistan are also unsafe. Additionally, the institutional system is unable to meet the needs of the internally displaced, which grow annually due to climate change and cannot absorb the demographic and social pressures of those returning from abroad. In March 2020 alone, 16,000 undocumented Afghan migrants returned to the country. From January to early September 2020, over 376,000 Afghans returned from Iran and Pakistan. In a single month, from August 22 to September 21, 81,000 returned from Iran. They are part of that immense pool of informal workers who will no longer be able to support their families. The history of Afghan migrations shows that Afghans have a long history of migrations—internal, regional, transnational—that precede the conflict. Mobility has always been part of Afghanistan’s social and cultural landscape. War, insecurity, and poverty are not the only drivers of migration: war has intensified and dramatized an ongoing process.

In this already difficult context, women’s mobility has become even more restricted, especially in more conservative areas like Kandahar, Khost, and Helmand provinces, where MSF conducted interviews that testify to the extreme difficulty of movement for women and girls.

But even in Kabul, the situation is no better: some MSF workers reported that women traveling alone without a mahram (a male family member) in shared taxis are sometimes asked to sit in the back seat and cover the cost of all three seats as no one else is allowed to share the taxi with them. This adds an additional financial burden and can make a woman’s trip to a healthcare facility two or even three times more expensive than a man’s. This affects women’s ability to reach a hospital (impacting timely and adequate primary and secondary healthcare access), a workplace, or any other place. This issue, reported by MSF in 2014, has worsened since.

The ban on women and girls accessing hammams (public baths), parks, and gyms, combined with mahram and hijab policies, has created an environment where it is difficult for women and girls to leave their homes. In the words of a former student, “Women are in prison; they can’t work, study, or go out. We are depressed,” as stated in the June 2023 UN Human Rights Council report, which also notes that groups of more than three or four women are regularly dispersed by officials to prevent protests. An interviewee explained, “Even if a small group of girls sits together, the Taliban ask what they are doing.”