ISTANBUL — The narcotics trade in southwest Asia is expanding as opium cultivation spreads from Afghanistan to neighboring countries, while large-scale trafficking of opiates and methamphetamine in the region continues.
The Afghan drug trade boomed during the U.S.-led war before the Taliban banned all drugs in 2022 after seizing power. Prohibition has been strictly enforced, and levels of poppy cultivation have fallen dramatically.
However, opium was still traded from the vast stockpiles that Afghans amassed during the war. This enabled farmers with more land to survive the ban even as they lacked alternative sources of income.
According to a report released last week by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan remains low this year, with just 10,200 hectares, a 20% drop from the previous year.
Alcis, a leading geospatial company located in the U.K., shares a slightly different trajectory, estimating that 12,800 hectares of land were used to grow poppy, a 74% increase. However, both show that opium cultivation in Afghanistan is still minuscule compared to the pre-ban period, when more than two hundred thousand hectares were planted.
A more significant development this year is the much larger area under cultivation in neighboring Pakistan, where opium was largely eliminated twenty-five years ago but has re-emerged since the Taliban ban.
“The rise in cultivation there is driven by Afghan farmers marginalized by the Taliban sharing their expertise and knowledge with landowners across the border,” said David Mansfield, an expert on illicit economies who led the Alcis research.
In only two small districts of Balochistan province, Alcis estimated more than 8,000 hectares had been planted with poppy. The total for the whole country may be in the tens of thousands, Mansfield believes.
The Taliban drug ban has also driven cultivation into parts of Iran, albeit on a smaller scale than in Pakistan, according to Alcis. Prohibition drove up the price of Afghan opiates, and Iranians may now be seeking cheaper supplies closer to home.
The Taliban ban also included Afghanistan’s booming methamphetamine industry but, as with opium, the scale of ongoing production is disputed. Alcis has reported a decline amid stringent Taliban restrictions, while the UN claims in its new report that “production continues to increase.”
Drug addiction has long been a problem in Afghanistan, until 2022 the world’s biggest producer of opium and heroin. © AP
But even if production has dropped, enough meth is still made in Afghanistan to account for the very large trafficking flows seen in the region, Mansfield believes.
Seizures of meth became 50% more frequent in 2024 compared to the previous year. There have been large busts in 2025, including a 1.8-tonne consignment in eastern Turkey in June, and recent hauls of over two tonnes in the Arabian Sea and one tonne in Kenya in October.
The expansion of opium across the region, while concerning, may have a silver lining, reducing the risk of heroin shortages in Europe that could have driven drug users to replace opiates with highly potent synthetic opioids like fentanyl, which has fueled a devastating overdose crisis in the U.S.
“To the extent that plant-based drugs are depleted, then obviously the push to synthetics is even greater,” Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told Nikkei Asia.
However, when fentanyl spread in the U.S., Felbab-Brown noted, that was not because of any shortage of heroin, but because opioids offered numerous advantages for criminals, being cheaper and easier to smuggle, for example.
Iranian suspects leave a court in Mombasa County, Kenya, on Oct. 27 after being arrested the previous week in connection with an Indian Ocean methamphetamine shipment, which Kenyan Police said was worth over $63 million. © Reuters
“Even in the context of a ban on plant-based drugs, synthetic drugs are so much more convenient for traffickers that over time they become irresistible for drug trafficking organizations,” Felbab-Brown said.
Afghanistan is also facing multiple risks that could lead to a resurgence of poppy cultivation on its soil. Following Israel’s attack on Iran in June, Tehran intensified deportations of Afghans living in the country, expelling more than 1.5 million back to Afghanistan. Many have also been expelled from Pakistan in recent months.
These returnees were a crucial source of remittances, which will now dry up, harming the already weak Afghan economy. Moreover, the UNODC notes that “intensified competition for scarce jobs and resources” could make “opium poppy cultivation more attractive” in Afghanistan.
Ongoing tensions between the Taliban and Pakistan could also benefit the narcotics trade. Recent peace talks in Istanbul failed to resolve the crisis, raising the prospect of renewed conflict.
“This instability will create opportunities for drug traffickers to exploit the situation,” said Ihsanullah Tipu Mehsud, a Pakistan-based journalist and co-founder of the Khorasan Diary, which tracks security issues in the region.
“War and conflict have always created opportunities for drug producers and traffickers,” he said, noting that the breakdown of law and order, corruption and economic hardship in wartime boost illicit activities.
The article was published in the asia.nikkei
