Opium Production in Afghanistan and Pakistan

Opium cultivation in Afghanistan and Pakistan is long-standing, probably covering thousands of years. Only in the decades since the 1960s, however, has opium been cultivated and transformed into rough morphine and heroin for export to the world market. Local men have traditionally smoked opium, whereas women eat it. To understand who cultivates opium in Afghanistan and Pakistan and why they cultivate it is the objective of this chapter. The volume of production and spatial distribution of opium cultivation is also discussed. Both Afghanistan and Pakistan have a long tradition of ingesting stimulants, intoxicants, and depressants. These ingestibles are discussed in the context of common consumption and their great cultural, spatial distribution. A brief synopsis of the current scale of opium production in Afghanistan is given. With the destruction of irrigation facilities since October 8, 2001, in the major opium-growing regions of southern Afghanistan where the Taliban Pashtuns reside, it is unlikely that cultivators will stop growing opium, the most highly valued crop. On the contrary, 2002 levels have soared to 1990s levels. In 2000, unpublished reports recorded that two Afghan provinces alone, Helmand and Nangarhar— home to the hard-core Pashtun Taliban and former anti-Soviet, U.S.-backed mujaheddin—produced 79 percent of Afghanistan’s production, which is 72 percent of the world’s opium supply. By 2001, the United Nations Drug Control Programme said that the 1999 production total of 4,581 tons had diminished to a 2002 total of 3,276 tons, and as a consequence of a Taliban enforcement program due to overproduction the amount had dwindled to 185 tons in 2001. These late estimates are not definitive because of the wholesale civic disruption in the poppy-growing regions. International heroin prices have not reflected the dramatic alleged reduction of opium production, with a gram of heroin in London holding steady at around $100. Interdiction programs in Central Asia have confiscated substantial amounts of heroin (Lubin, Klaits, and Barsegian 2002), but the supply continues, leading one to conclude that much of the bumper crop of opium in 1999 and in previous years was held in storage. The Taliban could claim that their eradication program diminished production, but in actual fact there was a glut of opium on the market and the Taliban’s program was a smokescreen in an effort to raise the market price. The 2002 harvest indicates that vast areas of southern Afghanistan were already planted to the levels of the 1990s.