The Heart of the Golden Crescent: The Poppy Fields of Afghanistan

The lands of Afghanistan have been rife with conflict since the mid-twentieth century all the way to the present. Usually associated with Osama Bin Laden, Al Qaeda, and the Taliban, Afghanistan has another more insidious export that has fueled the United States’ War on Drugs—opium.

An intoxicant that is the main ingredient of heroin, more than ninety percent of the world’s opium is produced in the hills of Afghanistan, smuggled via Iran and Pakistan to the rest of the world, thus forming what is known as the Golden Crescent. The unfortunate consequence of the US occupation post 9/11 was a rise in the production of heroin that heightened the security between these conflict-ridden borders.

Ideal for growing the opium poppy, Afghanistan has traditionally grown crops for local use and was regulated by the Afghan Royal family in the early twentieth century until the last Pashtun dynasty ended in 1978. The following year, after the government began to lose control of the provinces, the Soviets invaded. Opium production expanded at this time as warlords used its sales to generate money to purchase weapons. This was further compounded with the US interventionist foreign policy, and despite presenting an arm’s-length strategy to the world, there have been allegations that American CIA agents were smuggling opium out of Afghanistan to the Soviet Union to weaken it through drug addiction while supporting well-known drug lords.

When the Soviets left in 1989, opium production increased as warring drug lords used the profit to finance their military assistance. Although there is a direct correlation between conflict and opium production, there are some exceptions. The Taliban moved in after the absence of foreign occupation; opium production took a direct hit after their leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, in collaboration with the United Nations, declared poppy growing to be un-Islamic and banned the farming of opium, resulting in one of the world’s most successful drug campaigns.

The victory that eradicated three quarters of the world’s opium was short-lived after the deposition of the Taliban in 2002, following the US occupation in 2001. The Afghan economy collapsed and farmers seeking to create revenue were forced to grow opium for export. In 2004, despite a creation of a new Afghan governments and a new constitution, the two following growing seasons saw record levels of opium production as local government corruption undermined the eradication efforts.

Warlords, controlling the opium trade, flourished despite US presence by providing information on Al-Qaeda and Taliban insurgents. It didn’t help that some drug traffickers were noted government officials, so as the country’s stability was compromised, the drug trade was business as usual.

More profitable that wheat, opium had become the Afghan rural farmer’s source for income. In the years between, there was a stepping up on the eradication programs, but in 2013, in an ironic twist, the UN office on Drugs and Crime suggested that the Taliban had been supporting opium cultivation since 2008 as a source of income for the insurgency.

As the main heroin supplier for Europe in the past ten years, Afghanistan has had forty-thousand foreign troops attempt to manage the security situation, particularly from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). But despite their efforts, there has been a resurgence of opium production and heroin in post-Taliban Afghanistan.

Will there ever be an end to this deadly cycle of war, opium production, and poverty in Afghanistan? For now, it is difficult to ascertain, but until then, we can only watch and wait for what happens next.

Source

Wikipedia. 2016. “Opium Production in Afghanistan.” Last modified November 4. Accessed November 7, 2016. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_production_in_Afghanistan#Drug_trafficking_and_impact_around_the_world

Wikipedia. 2016. “Golden Crescent.” Last modified August 21. Accessed November 7, 2016. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Crescent

 

 

The post The Heart of the Golden Crescent: The Poppy Fields of Afghanistan appeared first on The Wayfarer.