The Taliban regime in Afghanistan has raged an unprecedented crackdown on opium cultivation in the country ever since it regained power in 2021. Satellite evidence make it clear that the trade has not reduced, it has simply shifted across the border into Pakistan’s restive Balochistan province, creating a new hub for heroin production and raising alarms in India about possible spillover effects.
In 2022, Afghanistan’s supreme spiritual leader banned poppy cultivation. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), opium farming there collapsed by 95 percent within a year. The area under cultivation fell from 233,000 hectares (575,210 acres) in 2022 to just 10,800 hectares (26,687 acres) in 2023.
But poppy did not disappear. Farmers simply crossed the 1,268-kilometre porous border into Pakistan, bringing with them seeds and expertise. Satellite imagery obtained by geographic data company Alcis shows that Balochistan alone now hosts 8,100 acres of poppy farms. This surpasses the 8,000 acres recorded in two Afghan provinces. Surveys in the districts of Duki and Gulistan reveal that many plots exceed five hectares (12 acres) and in some locations poppy covers 70 percent of all agricultural land.
“It’s very difficult to get land and grow poppies without a share for the local Baloch,” one migrant Afghan farmer told The Telegraph. “They know the Pakistani militia in the area.” Another added, “A lot of Baloch people have livestock – they don’t know about the cultivation of poppies.”
Most Afghan farmers either rent Balochistan’s land or work on it directly. The result, experts warn, is “unrestrained cultivation that has not ever been seen in Afghanistan, even in its peak years of opium production,” as David Mansfield, a veteran analyst of Afghanistan’s opium trade, told The Telegraph.
Afghanistan’s mixed picture in 2024
While Balochistan’s poppy boom continues, Afghanistan’s own output rebounded slightly in 2024 but remains far below pre-ban levels. UNODC estimates that cultivation grew by nearly 20 percent to 32,000 acres. “Despite the increase in 2024, opium poppy cultivation remains far below 2022, when an estimated 232,000 hectares (573,430 acres) were cultivated,” the UN agency said.
The geography of Afghan cultivation has also shifted. In the south-western region bordering Pakistan, where nearly half of the country’s production was located in 2023, cultivation collapsed by 65 percent in 2024. Helmand province was the only exception, with a dramatic 434 percent rise from a very low base. In contrast, the north-eastern region bordering Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan surged 381 percent this year to 7,563 hectares (18,693 acres) – almost four times the area cultivated in the south-west. Almost all the north-east’s production is concentrated in Badakhshan, a mountainous province that includes part of the Hindu Kush and Afghanistan’s short border with China.
Why Balochistan is becoming the ‘new Afghanistan’
Experts believe Pakistan may overtake Afghanistan in poppy cultivation by 2025. “The Afghan [poppy] crop in 2025 is likely to be far exceeded by Pakistan,” Mansfield said. The convergence of large-scale cultivation, multiple armed groups and weak state control has led some observers to call Balochistan “the new Afghanistan.”
“People talk about Balochistan as the new Afghanistan,” Mansfield added. “It’s unruly. There’s a lot of different armed groups there.”
The province is already home to long-running insurgencies by groups such as the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) and the Balochistan Liberation Front (BLF). These militant outfits have been battling the Pakistani state for over a decade. “Balochistan is a powder keg even in the calmest of times, with its combination of ethnic insurgents and Islamist militants,” said Michael Kugelman, senior fellow at the Asia Pacific Foundation in Vancouver. “It’s rough terrain security-wise, and it’s also a sensitive area, given the presence of Pakistani nuclear facilities and high-stakes Chinese investment projects. The drug trade can be destabilising even in isolation, but when it’s happening in a region rife with militancy, security risks will naturally soar.”
Corruption and security risks
Farmers in Balochistan complain of having to pay off “Pakistani militia” and local police to protect their crops, fuelling corruption and further weakening governance. The irony is not lost on observers: Pakistan was declared “poppy-free” in 2001, a status its officials still cite with pride.
For India, the concern is that proceeds from heroin production could be funnelled into terrorism. New Delhi fears that drugs produced in Balochistan could find their way across its borders, financing attacks on Indian soil.
Meanwhile, the Taliban’s crackdown on Afghan opium has contributed to a shift in global drug markets. The UNODC’s 2025 World Drug Report notes a growing use of synthetic opioids such as fentanyl and nitazenes, particularly in Europe.
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