TCEP Afghanistan

The UNODC World Drug Report 2008 was published in August 2008.  Questions on a hundred years of drug reduction are being included in TCEP's data bank.

Seven provinces in 2007 did not grow poppies.   The question on Afghanistan included in the question system demonstration names those 2007 provinces.

Farmed cultivation of poppies in 2006 is fifty-nine percent higher than 2005.  Afghanistan's Ministry of Counter Narcotics and UN Office on Drugs and Crime jointly reported on 2 September 2006 that 165,000 hectares were being farmed, mainly in the southern provinces and particularly Helmand.  Production decreased in eight of the thirty-four provinces. Six provinces grew no poppies.

Total opium production from the 2006 poppy harvest is estimated at 6,100 tonnes, the largest ever total.  The yield was 37 kilograms of opium per hectare.  The previous largest harvest was 4,100 tonnes in 1999.  2006 Production Report.

In 2005, the yield was 39 kg of opium per hectare of poppies.  (2004: 32 kg/ htr).  Ten kilograms of opium are needed to produce one kilogram of refined heroin.

Large Size High Resolution Map

The 2004 harvest in Afghanistan produced over four thousand two hundred metric tons of opium. The harvest was the third largest, responsible for producing three-quarters of the world's illicit opium production.  Bad weather and disease resulted in the overall production being seventeen percent greater.

The Rapid Assessment Survey 2006 was published in March 2006.

The Opium Poppy Survey 2005 was published in November 2005.

The Afghanistan Farmers' Intentions Survey 2003/2004 published in February 2004 describes the opium poppy production trends for that year's harvest.

In 2002, the Taliban cut total production to one hundred and eighty five tons.  Other countries have successfully replaced illicit drug production by legal and commercially viable crops, so why is Afghanistan after the Taliban difficult?

Click on the single poppy photograph above to watch Alastair Leithead's report for BBC Newsnight of 12 October 2006 on british soldiers' role in Afghanistan.

Click on the poppy farm photograph above to watch David Loyn's report for BBC Newsnight of 25 October 2006 about the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Click discussion to watch the BBC Newsnight 27 October 2006 debate on whether or not it was appropriate to broadcast the report on the Taliban.

The Opium Economy in Afghanistan: An International Problem discusses the current situation and provides background information. Table One on page 102 (page 106 of the pdf file) compares the profitability of legally grown crops with that for opium poppy production, in three target districts of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime Programme's Alternative Development Project in the Kandahar Province of Afghanistan in 2000.

With acknowledgement to: Afghanistan's Ministries of Agriculture, Education and Counter Narcotics; BBC Newsnight Team; UN Office on Drugs and Crime and Afghanistan Assistance Mission.

Copyright Richard West. Page updated 23 October 2011.