Afghanistan’s farms account for more than 80 per cent of the world’s opium production - ATIF ARYAN/AFP via Getty Images America’s “war on drugs,” launched by President Richard Nixon in 1971, raged for more than half a century but hardly put a dent in the Afghan opium trade.
The country’s farms account for more than 80 per cent of the world’s opium production but even the American invasion in 2001 did little to disrupt the flow of drugs out of the nation.
But now, where the world’s drug enforcement community has failed, the Taliban themselves are succeeding.
In April last year, the group’s religious leaders issued an edict prohibiting poppy farming across Afghanistan. More than 12 months on, the ban is being described by experts as “the most successful counter- narcotics effort in human history”.
The impact on the ground has been dramatic. Afghan poppy production has plummeted by an estimated 80 per cent in the last year as Taliban enforcers move from farm to farm destroying crops and punishing offenders.
Cultivation in Helmand province, which once produced around four-fifths of Afghanistan’s poppies and was the centre of British operations in the country from 2001 to 2015, fell to around 2,500 acres this year, down from 320,000 the year before, according to estimates based on satellite imagery.
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