KABUL: Farmers in northern Afghanistan have yet to make up for lost income since the Taliban government banned poppy production for opium three years ago, the United Nations said on Monday.

The ban has slashed poppy production overall to just 10,200 hectares this year, “one of the lowest levels ever recorded” in Afghanistan, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime said.

However, it also resulted in a shift from traditional growing areas in the south to northern provinces further from the control of Taliban authorities.

In Badakhshan on the border with Tajikistan, surveyed in the agency’s most recent report, poppy production has jumped since the Taliban returned to power in 2021.

In that province and in nearby Kunduz and Balkh, “on average, 85 per cent of families… reported either no replacement or only partial replacement of their poppy income” after abandoning production, the report found.

Published in Dawn, December 30th, 2025