--- title: How the Taliban Suppressed Opium in Afghanistan description: The militants have suppressed opium cultivation by almost 90%. But it is setting up the country, and the world, for far worse consequences. canonical: https://time.com/6294753/taliban-opium-suppression-afghanistan/ author: Vanda Felbab-Brown article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2023-07-17T10:55:36.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:51:04.878Z article:section: Ideas og:title: How the Taliban Suppressed Opium in Afghanistan og:description: And why that is setting up the country, and the world, for far worse consequences. og:url: https://time.com/6294753/taliban-opium-suppression-afghanistan/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt256ab051c57d303f/698a3eb386f68e1e116f29ab/GettyImages-1252620113.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: TOPSHOT-AFGHANISTAN-TALIBAN-OPIUM-AGRICULTURE og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: How the Taliban Suppressed Opium in Afghanistan twitter:description: And why that is setting up the country, and the world, for far worse consequences. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt256ab051c57d303f/698a3eb386f68e1e116f29ab/GettyImages-1252620113.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # How the Taliban Suppressed Opium in Afghanistan—and Why There's Little to Celebrate > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Inside TIME: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition Inside TIME is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. A closer look at TIME's latest cover and our most compelling stories. Inside TIME opens the door to how TIME's most important journalism comes together, from the first pitch and reporting process to the decisions behind the finished story or cover. Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs takes readers inside the newsroom, revealing the journalists, ideas and editorial choices behind the stories shaping the global conversation. 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It explains how TIME's journalism is made, from the first pitch through the editorial decisions behind a finished story or cover. #### How can I read about how TIME chooses its covers? Inside TIME is the newsletter where TIME's Editor-in-Chief explains cover selection and the editorial reasoning behind major stories. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who is the editor of TIME? Sam Jacobs is TIME's Editor-in-Chief. He writes Inside TIME, a twice-weekly newsletter about the newsroom's reporting and editorial decisions. #### Is Inside TIME free? Yes. Inside TIME is a free newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. ## Video: TIME World Report: What's Next For Putin's Power [Watch (HLS stream): TIME World Report: What's Next For Putin's Power](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/Dlymjvhx.m3u8) (5:44)  _Published 2023-07-06. Russian President Vladimir Putin faced the greatest threat to his authority in decades when the mutinous Wagner Group seized major cities in an armed rebellion against the Russian military on June 24. TIME Senior Correspondent Simon Shuster explains what this insurrection means for Putin's power._ by [Vanda Felbab-Brown](https://time.com/author/vanda-felbab-brown/) ## Vanda Felbab-Brown Jul 17, 2023 10:55 AM UTC  A Taliban security personnel destroys a poppy plantation in Sher Surkh village of Kandahar province on April 11, 2023. A Taliban security personnel destroys a poppy plantation in Sher Surkh village of Kandahar province on April 11, 2023. Sanaullah Seiam—AFP via Getty Images by [Vanda Felbab-Brown](https://time.com/author/vanda-felbab-brown/) ## Vanda Felbab-Brown Jul 17, 2023 10:55 AM UTC For years, the international community tried and failed to rein in Afghanistan’s drug economy, which in 2021 amounted to at least [14% of the country’s GDP](https://www.unodc.org/documents/crop-monitoring/Afghanistan/Afghanistan%5FOpium%5FSurvey%5F2021.pdf). But the Taliban, which swept into power that August after the U.S. withdrawal, appears to have now suppressed opium poppy cultivation by [almost 90%](https://www.alcis.org/poppy). On the surface, that is a remarkable development. Vast, illegal drug production amplifies [corruption, predatory rapaciousness](https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/why-taliban-won), and lawlessness helped bring down the U.S.-backed Afghan Republic, not to mention setting off high addiction rates. But suppressing opium production without offering economic alternatives creates grave socioeconomic harms to the already suffering Afghan people. And it is setting up the world for far worse public health consequences. According to [David Mansfield of consulting firm Alcis](https://www.alcis.org/post/taliban-drugs-ban), the Taliban’s enforcement of its [2021 ban on drug production](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/pipe-dreams-the-taliban-and-drugs-from-the-1990s-into-its-new-regime/) more or less wiped out poppy cultivation in Helmand and Nangahar, two major production areas. The countrywide decline seems to be on par with the [Taliban’s highly effective](https://www.amazon.com/Shooting-Up-Counterinsurgency-War-Drugs/dp/0815703287) poppy ban in 2000\. And just like then, the economic and social consequences of the ban are severe. The Taliban has been remarkably effective [in maintaining brisk trade](https://www.usip.org/publications/2022/08/one-year-later-taliban-unable-reverse-afghanistans-economic-decline) and crucial minerals exports, stabilizing the Afghan economy, significantly reducing corruption in taxes and customs, and generating some $2 billion in yearly revenues—the same as what the Afghan Republic did under far more generous international circumstances. But according to Mansfield’s estimates, the current opium ban has cost the Afghan economy [$1.3 billion and 450,000 jobs](https://www.alcis.org/post/taliban-drugs-ban) at the farm-level alone, and that doesn’t include the high economic losses downstream. What’s more, most of the Taliban’s budget is used to fund its military and security apparatus, leaving little for the Afghan people. As the economist [Bill Byrd puts it](https://www.usip.org/publications/2022/11/afghans-adapting-economic-decline-social-restrictions), the Taliban’s economic stabilization is one of a “famine equilibrium.” With [90% of the population](https://thedocs.worldbank.org/en/doc/e5065dff5ce7cced35c8d51150e90326-0310012022/original/WB-Afghanistan-AWMS-Brief-R2-Aug2022-V7.pdf) stuck in poverty, what has kept Afghans from starving is humanitarian aid. Yet that aid has been rapidly declining this year—by [at least $1 billion out of the $3 billion](https://www.usip.org/publications/2023/06/talibans-successful-opium-ban-bad-afghans-and-world) provided in 2022\. --- ### More from TIME --- Those who lost their opium livelihoods mostly cannot find economic alternatives to feed their families, including in the security services, as they used to during the Afghan Republic. Wheat has never been a good replacement crop, and the economy in Afghan cities is down as well. Essentially, once stocks from the summer 2022 opium bumper crop that the Taliban allowed to be harvested runs out, many households will experience dramatic declines in their ability to buy food, rent land, maintain housing, and receive medical care. As with [prior opium bans in Afghanistan](https://www.amazon.com/Aspiration-Ambivalence-Counterinsurgency-State-Building-Afghanistan/dp/0815724411), many households will fall even deeper into debt and be forced to marry off their daughters at an extremely young age. Migration out of Afghanistan will ramp up. **Read More:** [_Far From Home_](https://time.com/afghan-women-kabul-fall-anniversary/) Opposition to maintaining the ban into a second and perhaps third year will likely grow, including among the Taliban’s key constituencies, such as landed households in the country’s majority Pashtun areas and among Taliban commanders. Many of them [have funded their fighters and patronage cliques](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/pipe-dreams-the-taliban-and-drugs-from-the-1990s-into-its-new-regime/) from the opium profits for years. Frictions and tensions at even high levels of the Taliban could escalate. The reason why the drug ban persists because it actually serves Supreme Leader Haibatullah Akhundzada’s interests by depriving Taliban commanders of independent funding for patronage. Yet any further centralization of power in Akhundzada’s hands is bad. So are the global public health consequences. If the ban is maintained and in another year or so Europe starts experiencing a heroin drought not yet felt, a fentanyl epidemic will likely surge. Unlike during the 2000 poppy ban, fentanyl today is not a rare drug. In North America alone, it has set off the deadliest drug epidemic ever in history. Mexican cartels, the [key traffickers of fentanyl into North America](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/chinas-role-in-the-fentanyl-crisis/), have developed new [smuggling and retail networks](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-foreign-policies-of-the-sinaloa-cartel-and-cjng-part-iv-europes-cocaine-and-meth-markets/) as well as [synthetic drugs production hubs](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-foreign-policies-of-the-sinaloa-cartel-and-cjng-part-v-europes-supercoke-and-on-the-horizon-issues-and-the-middle-east/#:~:text=Vanda%20Felbab%2DBrown%20discusses%20Mexican,such%20as%20the%20Middle%20East.) in Western Europe. So far, the labs have been producing methamphetamine, the world’s most potent meth, but they can easily switch to fentanyl. Because of fentanyl’s high potency-per-weight ratio, [Chinese traffickers](https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/FP%5F20221107%5Fdrug%5Ftrafficking%5Ffelbab%5Fbrown.pdf) can also directly ship fentanyl to Europe. Or they can rely on their partnership networks, such as with Italian criminal groups. Moreover, the very cheap and easily produced fentanyl could start flooding other markets normally supplied by Afghan heroin, such as Pakistan and even Afghanistan itself. That being said, it’s possible that heroin from Myanmar and over time Central Asia or [Pakistan](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/high-and-low-politics-in-afghanistan-the-terrorism-drugs-nexus-and-what-can-be-done-about-it/), both places where cultivation used to be prevalent, could fill the void. Either way, it’s clear that cutting off supply doesn’t end use. It just forces those with substance use disorder and without treatment to switch to more dangerous drugs or new suppliers. For these reasons, the Taliban should not be praised for or encouraged to persist in its drug ban. Certainly, no diplomatic recognition of the Taliban regime should be awarded for it. But the international community should increase humanitarian aid and explore strengthening the Afghan rural economy through local investment. Such an approach made a lot of sense before the drug ban enforcement—it is even more urgent now. Like during the past 20 years, the flow of heroin out of Afghanistan is [best tackled](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/drugs-security-and-counternarcotics-policies-in-afghanistan/) through economic development and by countering drug trafficking outside of Afghanistan. ## Transcript On June 24th this year, we saw some of the most dramatic events play out. I think in puta, naira, Russia. Where we had an armed rebellion of one faction of the Russian Armed Forces, marching on Moscow, with tanks taking over a few big Russian cities, and taking them very easily without much resistance. And the importance of that is I think that it shook the authority of President Vladimir Putin to the core. I think it's it's it's a level of weakness and uncertainty and in his grip on power that I haven't seen in 15 years of reporting on Russia. The mutineer. It's it's a it's a term used to hear associated with pirates and Buccaneers but it's kind of a useful way to think actually about the Wagner group and you've guinea pig ocean. It's Commander, they are a private Army, a mercenary force of paramilitary force that operates within the blue kind of brought her umbrella of the Russian Armed Forces, but very much Independence and then pretty autonomous more and more. So as the war in Ukraine has been folded over the last year and a half or so you can guinea pig, ocean has spent months during the war, in Ukraine, complaining against the, the commanders of the Russian military saying that they are not providing him with enough weapons enough ammunition that they are ineffective incompetent and trying to kind of Steel Authority from them. They've got more and more independent, confident better armed and I think that Independence is, what gave the commander? You've been here for the Gordon, the confidence. And that would spur to declare this Mutiny and go to war against basically the rest of the Armed Forces. Is very hard to say how this is going to play out from now on there does seem to be at least the beginnings of a purge going on within the Russian Elites in response to this. I haven't been to Moscow since 2015 when they expelled me from the country, certainly in the last few months, it has been rare for Western journalists to go in there very consistently. The the regime has gone after every layer of the media. So now the level of of control that the regime has and exerts over the media is so extreme that. It's very hard to find independent sources of information. We've seen already at least one Russian general, who was close to there to the rebel faction arrested, in General Store, avakin better known in the Russian media. At least is General Armageddon for the absolutely rampant and horrible war crimes that he's been accused of he was in charge For a period of a few months of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Then was removed from that command generals, Aurora Beacon is an ally of the rebel commander for Goshen. They were quite close. It seems that the General survey can has been detained or arrested because of his connections to to this Rebel faction. There's an effort now, to weed out or two to figure out within the Russian Elites, who was aligned with, with this Rebellion, who was potentially helping them, or giving them information, or where that they were planning this Mutiny. So that's going to play out certainly in the coming days, if not weeks. And again the rebel commander is still free, he's been given leave as far as we know. So there is still this kind of Rebel faction. That is not being dismantled, they're still around and they still can serve as a kind of Alternative Center of power alternative center of gravity for any factions within Rush. Within the Russian to leave within the Russian military to gravitate towards in opposition to President Vladimir Putin. I think one thing that's been very consistent and Putin, the 23 years in power is the key was the man at the top of the pyramid, at the top of what he called the vertical of power, this kind of great Machinery of the states where he was at the wheel and all of the other elements of this, this machine all the different Clans and towers of the Kremlin. They might fight with each other, but Putin was always the kind of arbiter above them all. Who could settle disputes and who could put people in their place when they challenge the system. But I think Putin himself is still trying to Parson understand just How Deeply the foundations of his authority have been shaken and I think an intuitive Lee has his approach to doing that is to look for the traders, to try to find them. But also mindful of the fact that if there are more traitors than he thinks, they could still United band together against If he cracks down too hard so it's quite a delicate Balancing Act. If he has to strike, right? He needs to put down the rebellion and control the treasonous factions within the Russian Elites, but he can't do it so harshly and end so openly that they have a mind to unite again and maybe make another attempt to, to take Moscow. But I think I would expect that the Putin will now impose even harsher controls over the Elites in and try to weed out a rest. If not kill enemies that he sees around him that he imagines around him. That certainly has been that the historical pattern that we've seen in inside the Kremlin and within the Russian leadership for hundreds of years. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/6294753/taliban-opium-suppression-afghanistan/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/6294753/taliban-opium-suppression-afghanistan/"},"headline":"How the Taliban Suppressed Opium in Afghanistan—and Why There's Little to Celebrate","datePublished":"2023-07-17T10:55:36.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T07:51:04.878Z","description":"And why that is setting up the country, and the world, for far worse consequences.","url":"https://time.com/6294753/taliban-opium-suppression-afghanistan/","keywords":["Afghanistan"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt256ab051c57d303f/698a3eb386f68e1e116f29ab/GettyImages-1252620113.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Vanda Felbab-Brown","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/vanda-felbab-brown/"}],"articleSection":"Ideas","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt256ab051c57d303f/698a3eb386f68e1e116f29ab/GettyImages-1252620113.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"TOPSHOT-AFGHANISTAN-TALIBAN-OPIUM-AGRICULTURE","caption":"TOPSHOT-AFGHANISTAN-TALIBAN-OPIUM-AGRICULTURE","creditText":"Sanaullah Seiam—AFP via Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/ideas/","name":"Ideas"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/afghanistan/","name":"Afghanistan"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/6294753/taliban-opium-suppression-afghanistan/","name":"How the Taliban Suppressed Opium in Afghanistan—and Why There's Little to Celebrate"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"TIME World Report: What's Next For Putin's Power","description":"Russian President Vladimir Putin faced the greatest threat to his authority in decades when the mutinous Wagner Group seized major cities in an armed rebellion against the Russian military on June 24. 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