Afghanistan: How Neglect and Remoteness Bred Insurgency and a Poppy Boom: The Story of Badghis

Feb 22, 2017 | Jelena Bjelica, Afghanistan Analysts Network
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An unprecedented increase in opium poppy cultivation has been documented in Badghis for 2016, a remote western province that is largely underreported – even more so after the Spanish Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) there closed in 2013. The acreage under poppy cultivation increased almost by 200 percent, from 12,891 hectares in 2015 to 35,234 hectares in 2016, and significantly contributed to the countrywide increase of ten per cent. This was reported in the UN Office on Drugs and Crime’s (UNODC) 2016 Opium Survey released in December 2016. The Badghis increase was so substantial that the province now ranks second on the list of Afghanistan’s poppy- growing provinces, immediately after the decades-long frontrunner, Helmand. For the last ten years, the second place had ‘traditionally’ been occupied by Kandahar or Farah and, earlier (between 2002 and 2004), Nangrahar.