KABUL (The Thursday Times) — Opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan more than quadrupled in 2026 despite the Taliban regime’s ban, the United Nations said on Thursday, as poverty drives farmers back to the crop.
The area under poppy reached 43,000 hectares, up from 10,000 hectares in 2025, while estimated opium production jumped fivefold from 300 tonnes to 1,500 tonnes, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said in its annual survey, according to AFP.
Afghanistan was long the world’s biggest producer of opium until the Taliban’s 2022 ban cut cultivation from more than 200,000 hectares, after which Myanmar overtook it. The regime says it has destroyed more than 22,000 hectares, but UNODC said many plots were hidden among cereal crops or behind walls.
‘The only way’
Badakhshan in the northeast is now the main growing province. Two people were killed there in May in clashes when security forces moved to destroy poppy fields. “Without opium, we cannot even afford basic food,” a 22-year-old farmer told AFP. “We cultivate it with a great deal of fear.”
A hectare of wheat earned just over $770 in 2023, against about $10,000 for a hectare of poppy, according to UNODC. Opium prices dipped from $570 a kilogramme in 2025 to $500 in 2026, but remain far above pre-ban levels of under $100. The agency urged that farmers be given viable alternatives to the crop.
A worry for Pakistan
Pakistan, through which much Afghan opium and heroin has historically been smuggled, warned at a UN crime congress in Abu Dhabi in September of a possible resurgence in Afghan opium alongside a growing flow of synthetic drugs.
