2025-09-07 12:00
publication
2025-09-07 12:00
Pakistan is ahead of Afghanistan as the main Opium producer in the world – David Mansfield expert in a conversation with the British newspaper “Telegraph” said on Friday. In his opinion, the Taliban's change in the market is impact on the market.
The daily published satellite photos, showing numerous and large in terms of surface plantations of poppy seeds in Belugżistan, provinces in the southwestern Pakistan, in which terrorist militias operate, including Islamic State.
– Maku yields in Afghanistan in 2025 will probably be smaller than in Pakistan – predicts Mansfield. In his opinion, the sizes of the poppy plantation, of which many have an area of over five hectares, and their location near built -up areas, suggest “unlimited cultivation that was never seen in Afghanistan, even in the peak years of opium production.”
According to the newspaper, the outlawing of poppy crops by the Taliban in 2022, a year after the overthrow of the government supported by the US, forced Afghan farmers to go to Pakistan. They created new plantations there, bringing with them technological knowledge regarding the cultivation of plants in desert areas, including the use of solar energy to pump water from deep wells.
“People talk about Baludyan as New Afghanistan,” Mansfield noted in an interview with “Telegraph”, reminding that many different militias have there.
Analysts believe that drug trafficking profits most likely go to armed groups controlling the main trade and smuggling routes running through this region. At the same time, the Pakistani government has been fighting for decades with the front of the liberation of Belżistan (BLA), an ethnic separatist group, recognized by Great Britain and the United States as a terrorist militant.
The expert announced that the price of opium has been systematically decreasing since the short -term growth after the prohibition by the Taliban. At the peak, at the end of 2023, a kilo cost about $ 1050, but currently the price oscillates around $ 370. According to Mansfield, this decline is partly caused by the development of the Pakistani market.
– If this expansion of poppy cultivation proceeds in the bailing, it can lead to the restructuring of the opium industry in South-West Asia, which will have consequences for lower-level markets in Europe- he explained.
According to analysts, Afghanistan produced Opium until recently, from which 95 percent came. heroins on the European market.
From London Marta Zabłocka (PAP)
MZB/ Szm/
