The stunning concentration of global poppy production in Afghanistan

ARTICLE: “Poppy Fields Are Now a Front Line in Afghanistan,” by James Risen, New York Times, 16 May 2007, p. A1.

Not surprised poppy production is back, especially in those southern areas where it has been traditionally grown primarily because Kabul has rarely had any reach there.

What stuns me is how poppy production has fallen everywhere in the world since the end of the Cold War.

As the interesting chart in this article shows, global acreage of poppies was over 600k back in 1990, with Afghanistan accounting for maybe 100k.

Despite all the stories about Taliban curtailing production, the chart shows a reasonably steady climb in acreage through 2000, then a huge drop in 2001, and then the climb is rejoined, accelerating dramatically in the past three years as the Taliban have resurged.

But here’s the weird part: the rest of the world’s acreage drops steadily since 1990, from over 500k to just 100k, so now Afghanistan is 80 percent of global production.

People toss out that stat and say this is clear evidence of our failure to tame the southern regions in Afghanistan (Pashtun part), but there’s little new in that notion.

What I wonder about is, how did we get an 80% cut in the rest of the world’s production? I mean, it’s not like it’s risen or fallen as a function of drops or rises in Afghanistan. The two seem completely unrelated.

Instead, the pattern since 1990 seems very clear: Afghan production rising, the rest of the world’s falling, and so Afghanistan’s dominance rises steadily.

Comments

[BWJones]

Why not simply support opium poppy production in Afghanistan and legalize it through deals with big pharma in the West? After all, there are entirely legitimate uses of opiates and it is far cleaner environmentally speaking than synthetics. Furthermore, natural heroin can be used as a precursor to many other compounds, so why not formalize this, fairly compensate the poppy farmers, introduce them to a global market and bring revenues into remote Afghanistan?