# **Historical Background**

The genesis and subsequent history of large-scale opium production in Afghanistan have been intimately linked with the wars and upheavals in the country and in the surrounding region during the last two decades of the 20<sup>th</sup> Century. Opium has been produced for a very long time in Afghanistan, but until the end of the 1970s this was traditional production on a small scale, largely limited to a few areas and primarily for local or regional consumption.

The Soviet Union’s occupation of Afghanistan at the end of 1979, the emergence of a theocratic regime in Iran in the same year, and the development of the opium processing industry in Pakistan (which also cultivated opium poppy at the time), as well as developments farther away (for example in Turkey), together created the enabling conditions for massive expansion of opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan. Opium became a lucrative source of financing for the _mujahideen_ resistance forces fighting against the Soviet occupation, and the linkages to processing facilities in Pakistan paralleled those between Afghan resistance forces and Afghan political parties in Pakistan that were sponsoring and supporting the resistance. Iran’s abrupt elimination of opium poppy cultivation at the beginning of the Khomeini regime, Turkey’s shift to licit production, and Pakistan’s more gradual phase-out of opium poppy cultivation (while remaining a very important location for opium processing and the narcotics trade) provided “space” in the world market for Afghanistan to emerge as a major exporter of opium (including to meet Iran’s domestic consumption requirements). Although reliable data are not available, it is clear that Afghanistan became a very significant opium producer by the mid-1980s.

After the departure of Soviet forces in 1989 and especially after the collapse of the Najibullah regime in 1992, international financing for armed groups in Afghanistan was sharply reduced, further enhancing the relative importance of opium in providing funding for factions in the civil conflict which ensued. The Taliban regime, which took over Kandahar and much of the south in 1994, conquered Kabul in 1996, and controlled some 90% of Afghanistan’s territory by the end of the decade, provided an environment in which opium production and trade could flourish. Essentially treating it as a legal crop, the Taliban collected religious tax ( _ushr_ ) on opium at a low rate, as in the case of other agricultural products. Estimates of opium poppy cultivation, which were made on a more systematic basis by UNDCP (subsequently UNODC) starting from 1994, showed continuing increases to a peak of more than 90,000 hectares in the 1998/99 season, when Afghanistan accounted for close to 80% of total global illicit opium production.

Before the 2000/01 growing season, in what turned out to be their final year in power, the Taliban regime effectively banned opium poppy cultivation (but not trade) in the territories it controlled. While the motivation for this ban is subject to speculation, and major drug industry actors may have gone along with it in part because of oversupply and large stocks from previous bumper harvests, this was unquestionably the most successful and cost-effective short-run reduction in production of illicit narcotics achieved in history. However, the sustainability of this blanket ban was very doubtful, 3