The Taliban's Trojan horse: What really happened after Afghanistan's opium ban
Despite a Taliban-enforced ban on opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan that led to a 95% drop in production, heroin availability has not significantly decreased. Researchers suggest the ban was timed to allow for a massive final harvest, maintaining global supply chains.
Why it matters
It reveals the complexities of drug policy and the resilience of illicit global supply chains despite government decrees.
Wars have been fought over land, over succession, over a woman said to have launched a thousand ships toward Troy. Opium got its own war twice, in 1839 and again in 1856, but not the kind that name suggests. Britain went to war for the right to keep selling opium into China, after the Qing government tried to ban it and started burning British stockpiles in Canton harbour. China lost both wars, and lost control of its own opium market for the following century.Afghanistan has just tried to stage the same fight, but in reverse.
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