Who is Behind the Recent Rise of Genetically Modified Poppy in Afghanistan?

Oct 20, 2017 | Irfan Takalvi
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During the past two to two and half decades Afghanistan, under various regimes that controlled parts of the country, poppy has globally been highlighted as the most notorious origin of one of the world’s deadliest drugs, heroin.  As poppy, the opium plant, is one of the major sources of the production of heroin, and 80 to 90 percent of the world’s poppy is being cultivated in and harvested from Afghanistan, this dimension of the conflict which is also closely linked with farming activity and livelihoods came to the limelight first in the mid-1990s.
 There is little doubt the rival Afghan warlords encouraged poppy cultivation and even direct production of heroin to be sold to the international market, to gain financial resources required for survival of their respective combatants. For poor Afghan farmers, poppy became an attractive cash crop and they turned to it in large numbers especially in the eastern and south-eastern provinces of the country. However, it is also a fact that Taliban – considering poppy cultivation un-Islamic – carried out a serious and targeted campaign against poppy cultivation and reduced its cultivation to negligible levels in areas under their control. 2001, the last year Taliban were in power, was the year with the lowest production of poppy in Afghanistan.