The Taliban is taking control of Afghanistan’s US$3 billion heroin industry, officials warn

The Taliban – which banned poppy cultivation when it ruled Afghanistan – now appears to wield significant control over the war-torn country’s heroin production line, providing insurgents with billions of dollars, officials have said.

In 2016 Afghanistan, which produces 80 per cent of the world’s opium, made around 4,800 tonnes of the drug bringing in revenues of US$3 billion, according to the United Nations.

The Taliban has long taxed poppy-growing farmers to fund their years-long insurgency, but Western officials are concerned it is now running its own factories, refining the lucrative crop into morphine and heroin for exporting abroad.

“I pretty firmly feel they are processing all the harvest,” William Brownfield, US Assistant Secretary for Drugs and Law Enforcement told reporters in the Afghan capital Kabul recently.

“Everything they harvest is duly processed inside the country. They receive more revenues if they process it before it has left the country.

“Obviously we are dealing with very loose figures, but drug trafficking amounts to billions of dollars every year from which the Taliban is taking a substantial percentage,” he added.