#Taliban’s advance in Afghanistan could fuel surge in drug trade

The Taliban’s aggressive expansion across Afghanistan following the US withdrawal from the country could fuel a surge in the export of heroin and other drugs — including methamphetamine — as the radical Islamic militants seize critical international trade routes.

Opium poppy, which grows wildly in the Afghan countryside, is the country’s biggest cash crop, with an export value of somewhere between $1.5 billion and $3 billion per year, according to a report from the US Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.

While the Taliban has decried the use and production of opium, most of the poppy-growing farmland over the past couple of decades has been under Taliban control, and the crop “continues to represent the most significant source of income for the Taliban,” according to a recent UNODC report.

Now, as US forces withdraw and the Taliban quickly captures major cities that provide access to critical international trade routes, the Taliban could massively expand the production and export of heroin and other drugs, Michael Kugelman, a South Asia scholar at the Wilson Center, told The Post.

“Drugs are a big part of the Taliban’s finances and indeed we’ve seen them be able to seize a number of border posts,” he said. “If you control the borders, it’s going to be easier to facilitate the flow of drugs.”

Kugelman added that most of Afghanistan’s neighboring countries are already in “some degree of a heroin crisis.” There will surely be “spillover effects” of the insurgency in Afghanistan across Central, South and East Asia, he noted. 

It’s harder, he added, to predict the impact on the global export of drugs like heroin, but as the Taliban finds itself governing more of the country, it will likely turn to the drug trade to secure more financing.

“If you’re going to be in a position where you’re leading the government to an extent then you’re going to need even more finances, so I could envision in that context the Taliban trying to ramp up production, supply and even more to fund itself,” Kugelman said.

“This is something that the Taliban’s perfectly comfortable doing.”

The Taliban now control some ten international crossing points,  Jonathan Goodhand, a professor in conflict and development studies at the SOAS University of London, wrote in a piece for The Conversation, including Zaranj, which is near the border with Iran and has a history as a hub for the smuggling of fuel, drugs and people.

Other cities that the Taliban has captured in recent weeks have given it unfettered access to neighbors Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Iran and Pakistan, where goods can then be moved onward to Europe, Asia, Australia and elsewhere.The ongoing conflict and the Taliban’s need for continued funding will “unfortunately drive the global heroin market, as well as feeding the growing drug problem within Afghanistan and neighboring countries,” Goodhand concluded.

Also troubling Afghanistan analysts, the Taliban is reportedly diversifying into the cultivation of ephedra, another plant that grows wild across the country and is used to make methamphetamine.Foreign Policy reported last month that meth is much cheaper to produce than heroin and Taliban traffickers are now trying to ramp up the export of meth through its established heroin smuggling routes.

The Taliban’s capture of major cities that serve as trade hubs will only embolden the military group to export more illicit products, including heroin and drugs, the report said.

“Obviously, Afghanistan being a landlocked country, the ones who dominate these border passes have more effective control of international trade and taxation, and of course a way to neutralize the authorities and allow further exports of illicit products like drugs, and also incoming controlled substances like chemical precursors” used for refining drugs, said Cesar Guedes-Ferreyros, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s representative in Kabul, according to Foreign Policy. At least 85 percent of the world’s heroin is sourced from Afghanistan, he added.

And already in 2020, the number of drug seizures carried out by Afghan law enforcement had fallen by more than 50 percent compared with the prior year, according to a recent UNODC report.

At the same time, another UNODC report says, the share of Afghan land being used to grow poppy spiked 37 percent in 2020.“Afghan authorities have attributed this at least in part to the gradual expansion of Taliban-controlled territory in the country, particularly in key border provinces where transhipments occur,” the report reads.