Faizabad, Afghanistan: More than 100 people have been arrested for poppy cultivation in northeastern Afghanistan, police said Sunday, in an area that has previously resisted a Taliban government ban on the crop.
Taliban officials, on the orders of its supreme leader Haibatullah Akhundzada, banned poppy production throughout Afghanistan — then the world’s largest producer — in 2022.
Shafiqullah Hafizi, director of the police’s anti-narcotics department in Badakhshan province, said, “During an operation today, the department’s forces arrested more than a hundred people, including residents of different villages, who were cultivating poppy seeds.” .
“These people were presented with their files to the primary court of Badakhshan province to be prosecuted.”
The ban led to a 95% drop in the poppy crop in 2023, but farmers were hit hard financially and could not reap the same returns from alternative crops.
In November, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) however reported a 19 percent year-on-year increase in production.
Due to this, the center of poppy cultivation in the country shifted from the southern stronghold of the Taliban authorities to the northeastern provinces, including Badakhshan.
Taliban officials, who have stepped up a crackdown on production, faced a rare uprising in villages in Badakhshan province in May.
Clashes between farmers and brigades sent to destroy their poppy fields resulted in several deaths in the province.