Kabul, Sep 29 (Agency) Opium trade is in full swing in Afghanistan, though the Taliban had announced they would stamp it out after they took over the country on August 15. Opium is being freely bought and sold in the drug bazaars of southern Afghanistan, writes telegraph.co.uk. Sacks full of thick, brown opium paste are freely available in the drug markets as turbaned traders and farmers haggle over prices. These sacks will soon make their way as heroin into the country’s neighbours and then into the world beyond. Opium growers in Helmand told The Telegraph they were again preparing to plant fields full of poppies, with the Islamist group having so far stalled on implementing a ban – one of a number of promises that appeared designed to please the West but have since been broken. This has raised fears that Britain could see a further influx of heroin as the Taliban choose to profit from taxing the trade instead of stamping it out.
Prices of heroin spiked after Afghanistan’s Islamist rulers used one of their first press conferences to announce that they would halt the business, which provides more than 90 per cent of the heroin in the UK. However, opium growers say they have received no order to stop production and are preparing to carry on as normal. A trader in Nowzad district said business in the provinces’ opium bazaars was proceeding unhindered. “The trade in opium is free and everyone can buy and sell without threat,” he said. He said the prices had jumped from pounds 57 per kilo to pounds 78 amid uncertainty about production after the Taliban took power in mid-August, but now the rates were back to around pounds 60/kg. Afghanistan is the world’s largest opium supplier and is estimated to produce four-fifths of the global supply. In 2018, the UN said the drug accounts for 11 per cent of the Afghan economy. Production of opium kept growing even as the international community poured millions of pounds into counter-narcotics efforts during their two decades in Afghanistan.
A farmer in Marjah said he planned to plant an acre of opium and knew hundreds of farmers who were preparing to do likewise. “No ban has been announced by the current government,” he said. “People are in a bad economic situation and would not agree with a government ban this season. We don’t have any other way to get money.” Jan Mohammad, a farmer from Nad-e-Ali district, said he was planning to sow three acres when the planting season begins in a month, adding: “Without opium, we cannot get good returns from our land. “If the Taliban wants to ban poppy cultivation, we want them to make a good government and prepare economic growth jobs and everything. If they can’t do that, we will grow opium,” he said.