Afghanistan Analysts Network – English

Posts tagged: UNODC

UNODC

The Fourth Year of the Opium Ban: An update from two of Afghanistan’s major poppy-growing areas

Fabrizio Foschini • Jelena Bjelica •

The Islamic Emirate’s ban on opium cultivation has entered its fourth year and apart from the first harvest of opium poppies in spring 2022, when farmers were allowed to harvest their standing crop, the authorities have enforced it, with one notable exception – Badakhshan. Farmers there have been better able to avoid the ban, both […]

Economy, Development, Environment Read more

Treating Drug Users in Afghanistan: How to respond to a massive problem? 

Jelena Bjelica • Rohullah Sorush •

Afghanistan was, until recently, famously, the largest cultivator of illegal opiates in the world. Less well-known is that it is among the countries with the highest prevalence rates of drug use. In April 2022, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) banned poppy cultivation and subsequently, in January 2023, its supreme leader issued an order saying […]

Rights and Freedoms Read more
A farmer walks through his destroyed poppy field on the outskirts of Lashkargah in Helmand Province. Photo by Sanaullah Seiam/AFP, 9 April 2023

The Opium Ban: The impact on small farmers, sharecroppers and labourers in Helmand province

Ali Mohammad Sabawoon • Jelena Bjelica •

In what used to be Afghanistan’s largest poppy-growing province, Helmand, cultivation plummeted by 99 per cent in 2023 following the Islamic Emirate’s ban on the crop in April 2022. Although opium trading largely continued, which brought windfall profits to anyone with opium stocks to sell, the ban on cultivation has caused unemployment and an economic […]

Economy, Development, Environment Read more

New World Drug Report: Opium production in Afghanistan remained the same in 2019

Jelena Bjelica •

The United Nations Drugs and Crime Office’s (UNODC) World Drug Report, released today, shows a decrease in the cultivation of opium in Afghanistan in 2019 following price falls after the bumper years in 2017 and 2018. However, in 2019 when weather conditions were optimal for growing poppy and plant disease absent, yields were high. Overall, that meant […]

Economy, Development, Environment Read more
A labourer in Nad-e Ali

Local Drug Markets Normalised, More Mass Treatment for Addicts, a Ministry Dissolved: A look at recent drug trends

Jelena Bjelica •

Two new reports – UNODC’s annual survey and a scrutiny by SIGAR of US-funded drug treatment programmes – have revealed new trends in the drug industry in Afghanistan. Opium sales locally look to be increasingly normalised, and those with skills in harvesting the crop are doing well, even while farmers’ incomes have fallen. AAN’s Jelena […]

Economy, Development, Environment Read more

The Myth of ‘Afghan Black’ (2): The cultural history of hashish consumption in Afghanistan

Fabrizio Foschini • Jelena Bjelica • Obaid Ali •

Hashish or chars is a fairly common substance in Afghanistan. Its use, without ever attaining the levels of mass consumption that characterise other lightly-intoxicating substances in other war-torn countries, like the chewing of qat in Yemen or Somalia, for example, has remained relatively widespread. This does not mean that it is condoned by society: hashish-users, known as […]

Context and Culture Read more

A Drop from Peak Opium Cultivation: The 2018 Afghanistan survey

Jelena Bjelica •

The Afghanistan Opium Survey 2018 released today by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) shows decrease of a fifth in the countrywide cultivation of opium compared to the previous years. The 263,000 hectares under the cultivation in Afghanistan this year was still the second largest score for Afghanistan since the UNODC began […]

Economy, Development, Environment Read more

19 March 2015, Basle: OPIUM – an exhibition

Thomas Ruttig •

OPIUM – that’s the title of an exhibition that opens on 15 March 2015 in the Museum der Kulturen Basel (MKB; Basle Museum of Cultures) in Switzerland. It is curated by Doris Buddenberg, former country director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime in Kabul and member of the Advisory Board of the Afghanistan […]

Events Read more

“Opium anzubauen bringt den afghanischen Bauern am meisten”

Thomas Ruttig •

SRF4 (Swiss radio), 14 Noveember 2013 Listen to the audio of an interview AAN’s Thomas Ruttig gave to Swiss radio about the latest UNODC report regarding poppy cultivation.

AAN in the Media Read more

Rekord bei Opiumanbau in Afghanistan

Thomas Ruttig •

Deutsche Welle, 13 November 2013 The German international radio reports that the latest UNODC report found that the acreage used for poppy growing has never been as large as this year. AAN’s Thomas Ruttig is quoted extensively about the histroy of poopy cultivation and the contradictions in the West’s anti-narcotics policy: “The opium boom is a […]

AAN in the Media Read more

Afghanistan’s Fluctuating Poppy Production: More Than a Poverty Problem

Doris Buddenberg •

Afghanistan’s area of poppy cultivation has increased by 7 per cent compared to the last year and more provinces cultivate poppy than then. This is the gist of annual opium survey for the country for 2012. There are no predictions about how many (thousands of) tons this will be. And the publishers – the UN […]

Economy, Development, Environment Read more

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