Opium has remained central to the Afghan economy since the departure of US forces in 2021 and the re-establishment of the Taliban regime. The change of power in Kabul, however, changed the geopolitics of the country’s narcotics trade. The opium game in Afghanistan, its players and its rules are very different from what they were just a year ago.

That the Taliban have embraced the narcotics economy is no surprise. The Taliban briefly tried to ban poppy cultivation the last time they came to power at the turn of the century, only to face broad popular opposition to the move, including from dependent farmers to live in the absence of a functional economy. After their fall from power following the US invasion in 2001, the Taliban, backed by local Afghan farmers, stepped up poppy cultivation to fund their own war effort against the newly installed government in Kabul.

The United States has allocated billions of dollars – more than 8 billion out of 15 years according to one account – to eradicate poppy cultivation in Afghanistan and deprive the Taliban and affiliated insurgent groups of a major source of funding. The ambitious plan included airstrikes and laboratory raids, among other measures. But the effort ultimately failed. Accounting for more than 80% of the world’s opium and heroin production, drug production in Afghanistan hit a record high in 2017, with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimating the overall size of its $6.6 opiate business. billion dollars or about 30 percent of Afghanistan’s GDP.

Opium has remained central to the Afghan economy since the departure of US forces in 2021 and the re-establishment of the Taliban regime. The change of power in Kabul, however, changed the geopolitics of the country’s narcotics trade. The opium game in Afghanistan, its players and its rules are very different from what they were just a year ago.

That the Taliban have embraced the narcotics economy is no surprise. The Taliban briefly tried to ban poppy cultivation the last time they came to power at the turn of the century, only to face broad popular opposition to the move, including from dependent farmers to live in the absence of a functional economy. After their fall from power following the US invasion in 2001, the Taliban, backed by local Afghan farmers, stepped up poppy cultivation to fund their own war effort against the newly installed government in Kabul.

The United States has allocated billions of dollars – more than 8 billion out of 15 years according to one account – to eradicate poppy cultivation in Afghanistan and deprive the Taliban and affiliated insurgent groups of a major source of funding. The ambitious plan included airstrikes and laboratory raids, among other measures. But the effort ultimately failed. Accounting for more than 80% of the world’s opium and heroin production, drug production in Afghanistan hit a record high in 2017, with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimating the overall size of its $6.6 opiate business. billion dollars or about 30 percent of Afghanistan’s GDP.

As an insurgent group, the Taliban had no choice but to work with local distributors and regional smugglers, focusing on the heavily guarded Iranian border as the most viable route to smuggle tons of opium. , heroin and methamphetamine to lucrative markets across Europe and Canada. Under increasing pressure from security forces and law enforcement in Afghanistan and along the border with Iran, Taliban-backed traffickers have sometimes gone so far as to rely on equipment that has catapulted drug shipments across the Iranian border or on heavily drugged unmanned cattle that entered Iran unsuspectingly.

It is no surprise that the Taliban government today began to take drastic measures measures suppress opiate addiction in society and regulate supply and demand at the national level. This does not mean, however, that Afghanistan’s new rulers have taken their eyes off European markets. On the contrary, the long-term goal seems to be towards the centralization of the narcotics industry in the hands of the government and, ultimately, the maximization of revenues from this industry into the coffers of the state.

According to a UNODC study briefthe overall income generated solely by the illicit trade in opiates inside the country was between $1.8 and $2.7 billion in 2021, with the largest share of profits going to players who controlled international supply chains. These actors are now the Taliban themselves and their foreign allies. “The Taliban have relied on the Afghan opium trade as one of their main sources of income,” said César Guedes, head of the UNODC office in Kabul. Recount Reuters last year. Nor are Taliban officials any longer hampered by the political considerations that have driven US counter-narcotics policies. These policies were carried out in large measure to protect allied European nations from the relentless flow of narcotics and consequent organized crime. The Taliban are now committed to patrolling and protecting their borders to prevent drug trafficking, but in reality they are intentionally neglecting smuggling activities.

The emerging status quo has serious implications for Iran, which has traditionally served as the main transit route for the international drug trade from Afghanistan. Tehran has generally refrained from using narcotics as a state instrument of revenue generation or as a source of strategic leverage against the West.

The Trump administration’s so-called maximum pressure campaign against Iran threatened to change this policy. In July 2018, shortly after then-US President Donald Trump’s administration withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal and reinstated sweeping sanctions against Tehran, Iran’s Interior Minister , Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli cited increasing drug production in Afghanistan to more than 9,000 tons a year and warned that if Tehran looked the other way, “more than 5,000 tons of narcotics would leave Iran’s borders for the West.” Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, at that time, actually made efforts to tap into the illicit opiate economy on the side. Iran did not end up making a major policy shift for a variety of political and practical reasons, including the strong interest of the Iranian government in preserving the reputational benefits of a well-functioning relationship with the UN on the fight against narcotics.

While Iran now faces increased pressure on its borders, it is no longer the most important regional gatekeeper for narcotics trafficking from Afghanistan. This role now falls to Turkey. Ankara’s interest in narcotics grew significantly during the Syrian civil war, where opiates were known to be used heavily by frontline fighters engaged in close combat. During the war, Turkey supported an unconventional constellation of militants and paramilitary groups in Syria, which over time had to develop their own local economy to fund their war effort. These groups have resorted, at least in part, with the encouragement and support of Turkey, to the illicit trade in fuel and narcotics.

Since taking control of Kabul airport in Afghanistan earlier this year, Turkey has taken a long-term stake, with the blessing of the Taliban, in Afghanistan’s domestic markets and its international trade. , including his multi-billion dollar narcotics business. It would look like the way the Turkish government helped flood the post-conflict Iraqi and Syrian markets with Turkish products. Turkey’s tight control over the opiate supply lines out of Afghanistan also gives it an added advantage: it gives Ankara leverage to exert strategic pressure on its European rivals in times of high tension. and crisis, as was the Case with Ankara’s approach to Syrian war refugees and migration flows. “We believe that some [Afghan methamphetamine] went to Turkey, noted Laurent Laniel, analyst at the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction. “And if it reaches Turkey, we assume some will arrive in Europe.”

The Russian invasion and continued occupation of Ukraine is sure to complicate this new geopolitics, not only diverting scarce resources and political attention from international counter-narcotics campaigns, but also creating massive demand that transnational organized crime and its state sponsors will not hesitate to fill. On the one hand, the Mass of Moscow deployment of seasoned foreign fighters from Syria to Ukraine is likely to facilitate drug-related criminal connections between the two conflict zones. And among those who profit from all these illegal activities will almost certainly be the Taliban.