With an AK-47 assault rifle slung over his left shoulder and a stick in his right hand, Abdul hits the heads of the poppies as hard as he can.
The stems fly through the air, like the sap from the poppy bulb, releasing the characteristic pungent odor of opium at its strongest.
Within minutes, Abdul and a dozen men raze the crop of poppies that covered the small field. The armed men, all dressed in a shalwar kameez (a traditional Afghan robe with baggy pants), most with long beards and some with kohl-lined eyes, pile into the back of a pickup truck and head to the next field.
The men belong to a Taliban counter-narcotics unit in Nangarhar province in eastern Afghanistan. AND we gained exceptional access to join them on one of their patrols to eradicate opium poppy cultivation.
Less than two years ago, these men were insurgent fighters in the war for control of the country. After the victory of the Taliban they are on the official side and carry out the orders of the government.
In April 2022, Taliban Supreme Leader Haibatullah Akhundzada decreed that cultivation of the poppy, from which opium, the key ingredient in heroin, can be extracted, was strictly prohibited. The decree warned that anyone who violated prohibition she would be punished under Sharia law and her harvest would be destroyed.
A Taliban spokesman told the BBC they imposed the ban because of the harmful effects of opium – which is extracted from poppy seed capsules – and also because it goes against their religious beliefs.
Afghanistan used to produce more than 80% of the world’s opium. Heroin made from Afghan opium accounts for 95% of the market in Europe.
The BBC traveled to Afghanistan and used satellite analysis to examine the effects of government action on opium cultivation.
Taliban leaders appear to have been more successful in stamping out the crop than anyone before.
We found a large drop in poppy cultivation in the main opium-producing provincesand one expert pointed out that the annual crop could be 80% lower than last year.
Less profitable wheat crops have supplanted poppies in the fields and many farmers say they are suffering financially.
We traveled to provinces like Nangarhar, Kandahar and Helmand, drove on muddy roads, trekked for miles in remote and mountainous areas, and plowed through farmland to see the reality on the ground.
The Taliban decree did not apply to the 2022 opium harvest, which according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) increased by a third compared to 2021.
This year, however, is very different. The evidence we saw on the ground is supported by satellite imagery.
David Mansfield, a leading expert on the Afghan drug trade, is working with Alcis, a UK company that specializes in satellite analysis.
“The crop is likely to be less than 20% of what it was in 2022. The scale of the reduction is unprecedented“, he pointed out.
Large numbers of farmers have complied with the ban and Taliban fighters destroy the crops of those who have not.
Toor Khan, the commander of the Taliban patrol unit we are with in Nangarhar, tells us that he and his men have been destroying poppy fields for nearly five months, wiping out tens of thousands of hectares of crops.
“They are destroying my field, may God destroy your home,” a woman shouts angrily at the Taliban unit as they bulldoze her poppy field.
“I told you this morning to destroy it yourself. You didn’t, so now I have to,” Toor Khan yells. She retreats into the house.
His son was detained by the Taliban during the operation and released with a warning a few hours later.
The Taliban are armed and in large numbers because there have been cases of resistance from some residents. At least one civilian was killed in a shootout during the eradication campaign, and there are reports of other violent clashes..
Farmer Ali Mohammad Mia watches with a sorrowful look as the unit destroys his field. Pink poppy flowers, green bulbs and broken stems cover the ground at the end of the operation.
Why did you grow poppies despite the ban? we asked the farmer.
“If you don’t have food at home and your children are hungry, what else would you do?”, reply. “We don’t have large tracts of land. If we grew wheat we would get a fraction of what we earn from opium.”
What is striking is the speed at which the Taliban carry out the work using only sticks.
The patrol cleared six fields, each between 200 and 300 square meters, in just over half an hour.
How do you feel about destroying a source of income for your own hungry people? we asked Toor Khan.
“It is the order of our leader. Our loyalty to him is such that if he told my friend to hang up on me, I would accept it and hand myself over to my friend,” he says.
Helmand province, in the southwest of the country, used to be the heart of Afghanistan’s poppy cultivation, producing more than half of the country’s opium.
We went to Helmand independently of the Taliban’s counter-narcotics unit to see firsthand what is happening now.
Last year, when we were in the province, we saw land covered with poppy fields. This time we cannot detect a single field of that crop.
Alcis’s analysis shows that poppy cultivation in Helmand has been reduced by more than 99%.
“High-resolution images from Helmand province show that poppy cultivation has been reduced to less than 1,000 hectares. The previous year it was 129,000 hectares,” says David Mansfield.
We spoke to farmer Niamatullah Dilsoz in the Marjah district, south of Helmand’s capital, Lashkar Gah, while he was harvesting wheat. Last year he had planted opium in that same field. Niamatullah tells us that almost all farmers in Helmand, a Taliban stronghold, have complied with the ban.
“Some farmers tried to grow poppies in walled gardens, but the Taliban found the plantations and destroyed them,” he adds.
Except for the sound of wheat stalks being cut and birdsong, all is quiet in the field. During the war, this area was a front line.
UK troops were based at Helmand and fought some of their fiercest battles there.
Niamatullah is in her early 20s. This is the first time in his life that he is not afraid of being hit by a bomb when he ventures out.
But for a people already shocked by a long war, the opium ban has dealt a crushing blow. The destruction of crops takes place in the middle of a economic collapse that has caused near universal poverty in Afghanistan. Two thirds of the population do not know where their next meal will come from.
“We are very upset. Wheat gives us less than a quarter of what we used to earn from opium,” says Niamatullah. “I cannot meet the needs of my family. I had to ask for a loan. There is hunger everywhere and we don’t have any help from the government“.
We asked Zabiullah Mujahid, the main spokesman for the Taliban government, what his government is doing to help the people.
“We know that people are very poor and are suffering. But the harm that opium causes outweighs its benefits. Four million Afghans out of a population of 37 million suffered from drug addiction. That is a huge number,” he states. “Regarding alternative sources of livelihood, we want the international community to help Afghans cope with the losses“.
The spokesman rejects claims by the UN, the United States and other countries that opium was a major source of income for the Taliban when they were fighting Western troops and the former Afghan regime.
“How can the Taliban expect help from international organizations when the Taliban government itself jeopardized the operations and funding of those organizations? prohibiting the work of women in all NGOs?”, we asked the official spokesperson.
“The international community should not link humanitarian issues with political issues,” Mujahid replies.
“Opium is not only harming Afghanistan, the whole world is affected by it. If the world is saved from this great evil, then it is only fair that the Afghan people receive aid in return.”
The impact of the ban on opium prices is evident.
In Kandahar, the spiritual home of the Taliban and traditionally another important poppy-growing area, we meet a farmer holding on to a small part of his crop from last year: two plastic bags, each the size of a soccer ball. soccer balls, filled with dark, pungent-smelling opium resin. We’re hiding his identity to protect him.
“Last year, just before the ban, I sold a bag like this for a fifth of what I could get now. I am waiting for the price to increase even more so that I can support my family for longer. Our situation is very bad. I already had to ask for a loan to buy food and clothes. Sure I know opium is harmful, but what is the alternative?” she tells us.
It may take a while for crop destruction to impact the retail price of heroin.
“While opium and heroin prices remain at their highest in 20 years, they have been falling for the past six months, despite low levels of poppy cultivation this year,” Mansfield says.
“This suggests that there are significant reserves in the system, and that heroin production and trade continue. Seizures in neighboring states and further afield also indicate that heroin shortages are not imminent.”
Mike Trace, a former UNODC official, was a senior adviser to the British government on drug policy when the first Taliban regime banned opium cultivation in 2000, a year before the US-led invasion of Afghanistan.
“That didn’t have a massive, immediate impact on Western prices and markets, because the actors accumulate a lot of inventory along that drug route,” he says. “That’s the nature of the market and it hasn’t fundamentally changed in the last 20 years.”
The United States spent billions of dollars in Afghanistan to try to eradicate opium production and trafficking, thereby cutting off the source of funding for the Taliban.
US forces have launched airstrikes on poppy fields in Taliban-controlled territory, burning opium stocks and raiding drug laboratories.
But opium was also grown freely in areas controlled by the former Afghan-backed regime. or by the United States, something the BBC witnessed before the Taliban takeover in 2021.
For now, the Taliban appear to have achieved in Afghanistan what the West could not. But there are questions about how long they can sustain the situation.
As for heroin addiction in the UK and the rest of Europe, Mike Trace says a drastic reduction in opium cultivation in Afghanistan is likely to alter the type of narcotics consumed.
“People are likely to turn to synthetic drugs, which can be far more harmful than opium“.
Journalists Imogen Anderson and Rachel Wright contributed to this story.
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