The much-hailed ban on drugs by the Taliban since April 2022 notwithstanding, opium production in Afghanistan is again on the rise. The latest findings of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) on opium production in Afghanistan are revealing. The era of Taliban success in controlling and diminishing opium production seems to be over. To the contrary, production has jumped fivefold in a year, with a new growing area away from the traditional southwest. 

Behind the steep rise are intertwining stories of international demand, desperation and adaptation by poverty-stricken farmers, and the failure not just of the country’s de facto authorities but also of the international community to keep production low. 

The latest UNODC report highlighted how, despite claims of the eradication of 22,000 hectares of poppy this year by the Taliban, the area planted grew by 330 percent to more than 43,000 hectares, up from about 10,000 hectares in 2025. Estimated production also rose by 400 percent, from about 300 tonnes to just under 1,500 tonnes. The report pointed to the role of poverty and lack of alternative crops in driving the increase, forcing farmers to adopt innovative methods to evade Taliban scrutiny. With opium stockpiles fast emptying due to constant demand from Europe, and a lack of any other country capable of filling supply needs, a back-to-the-future moment is at hand for Afghan opium production. 

Several underlying structural factors make total elimination a mere fallacy.

First is the expansion of production. UNODC says that cultivation has spread to 16 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, up from 11 in 2025. The new provinces now cultivating poppies are Balkh, Daykundi, Farah, Herat, Laghman, and Nangarhar. Only Zabul became poppy-free, which results in a net increase of five provinces now growing opium poppy. UNODC has historically classified provinces with less than 100 hectares of cultivation as poppy-free. 

The emergence of Afghanistan’s northeastern provinces as the main growing areas for poppy sheds further light on the complex linkages between the narco-economy, illicit networks, and the absence of state control. 

UNODC identifies two provinces – Badakhshan and Takhar – as accounting for 76 percent of total cultivation in 2026. The remaining 14 provinces are therefore marginal players. Breaking this down further reveals that Badakhshan’s 29,482 hectares of identified poppy-growing area amounts to 68 percent of such areas in the entire country. Takhar, on the other hand, contributes only 8 percent. Notably, only 3,561 hectares of Badakhshan grew poppy in 2021, before the Taliban captured power. That represents a 728 percent increase in just five years. More interestingly, not long ago, in 2025, only 6,639 hectares were under poppy cultivation in the province. That amounts to an increase of 344 percent in a single year. 

In percentage terms, the rise of poppy cultivation in Takhar is even more explosive. The province was completely poppy-free in 2021. By 2025, though, poppy was being grown on 274 hectares, making it a minor contributor. But in 2026, it registered a 1,100 percent increase, reaching 3,400 hectares.

Badakhshan, which borders Pakistan’s restive Gilgit-Baltistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces, and adjacent Takhar, are the central actors in the resurgence of Afghanistan’s narco-economy, even as they are not the only areas where poppy cultivation is returning. 

Helmand and Kandahar, both in the traditional southwest poppy-growing area, have registered 400 and 300 percent growth, respectively. 

The rising resentment of the farmers against the Taliban in Badakhshan and Takhar, local collusion, as well as the rise of anti-Taliban armed resistance, probably explain why Taliban efforts to rein in opium production have shown little progress. Whether eradication is also failing in other provinces, including the spiritual capital of Kandahar, remains unanswered. If the Taliban figure of eradication of 22,000 hectares of poppy is to be believed, the net increase in overall area would amount to 55,000 hectares and not only the 33,000 that UNODC estimates. 

Since 2023, UNODC has emphasized its “Alternative Development Program,” which works with communities in Afghanistan and aims to encourage farmers to move away from illicit crop cultivation and in favor of licit crops. This includes measures such as orchard establishment and poultry production, as well as management support. It is evident, however, that these programs have not been able to make much impact on the ground. 

UNODC’s latest report refers to the adaptability of the farmers and the involvement of the non-local middlemen in the rise of poppy cultivation in the northeast. Cultivation in small patches that are hidden within cereal fields or inside walled compounds could be contributing factors, but these cannot explain why such a phenomenon that’s known to UNODC remains hidden from the omnipresent Taliban. 

Is there a nexus between cash-strapped Taliban operatives and other warlords, and the narcotics smugglers in Pakistan? Sources in Zabul, the province that reported no poppy cultivation in 2026, told local media that in fact some Taliban fighters, alongside drug traffickers, are involved in the collection, processing, and smuggling of drugs in the province, a sign that the existing illicit network is growing.

Further, it is hard to imagine that the poppy – raw and processed – from Badakhshan and Takhar isn’t crossing over into Pakistan through the porous border. Balochistan appears to have become the main hub of opium cultivation in the Afghanistan-Pakistan-Iran border region. Experts have also warned that the tri-border area comprising Pakistan’s southwestern province of Balochistan and Iran’s southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan, both bordering Afghanistan, have witnessed a sharp rise in poppy cultivation in recent years. Similarly, are the anti-Taliban resistance forces, who claim to have made Badakhshan one of their primary areas of operation, also involved in the trade to finance their war?

The resurgence of opium in Afghanistan is more than a statistical reversal. The Taliban ban on all cultivation of opium poppy, celebrated as a rare success, rests on coercion rather than on any change in the underlying structural conditions that drive farmers to cultivate poppy. Moreover, the Taliban have done little to break the illicit networks sustaining this shadow economy, including cash flows through the hawala systems. Statistical achievements have little meaning in the absence of changes in ground realities – a point that the explosion of coca production in Colombia could speak to. 

For Afghanistan’s neighbors and the wider world, the lesson is daunting. Steady demand for drugs will ensure there is a market for revived supply, while an international community that offers neither meaningful development support nor engagement as to alternatives leaves farmers with few options. Lasting reduction in poppy cultivation can only result from a combined effort by the de facto authorities and the international community to provide viable alternative livelihoods, transparent governance in the provinces where cultivation is surging, and cooperation across borders to choke off the trafficking routes. Until then, the cycle of the illicit narco-economy will keep reinventing itself.