New Opium Hub Emerges in Afghan Borderlands With Pakistan and Iran After Taliban Ban

Afghanistan's opium output, for years the largest in the world, has fallen sharply since the Taliban imposed a wide-ranging ban on illicit narcotics in 2022. Yet the militant group has not eliminated cultivation entirely, and production now appears to be moving across the border into neighboring Pakistan and Iran.

Satellite imagery and interviews with local farmers point to a steep increase in poppy cultivation in Pakistan's southwestern province of Balochistan and Iran's southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan, both of which border Afghanistan. "The Taliban drugs ban, combined with growing instability in the tri-border area, has created the conditions for widespread poppy cultivation in Pakistan's Balochistan Province and parts of Iran," said David Mansfield, a leading UK-based expert on Afghanistan's illicit drugs industry. The result, said Mansfield, author of A State Built On Sand: How Opium Undermined Afghanistan, is that the remote borderlands of the three countries have become "a global center for opium production." Experts caution that cultivation could climb further in 2027, potentially boosting heroin supplies on international markets, generating income for armed groups, and stoking violence.

Balochistan, Pakistan's largest and poorest province, appears to be at the core of the shift. The province has suffered a decades-long insurgency by separatists and other militants drawn mostly from the ethnic Baluch minority, and violence has intensified in recent years. Islamabad has denied reports of opium cultivation and insists any poppy crops found have been destroyed. Pakistan's Interior Ministry and the provincial government did not respond to requests for comment, and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has estimated that opium production in Pakistan remains marginal, though the agency acknowledged that scarce regional data and sharp rises in eradication figures point toward "a certain degree of spillover effects."

Satellite analysis by Alcis, a British firm, together with farmer interviews, suggests cultivation is widespread and growing. "Satellite imagery assessments identified more than 9,000 hectares of poppy cultivation in Balochistan alone," said Mansfield, who wrote an August report for the firm. Most of it is concentrated in the districts of Loralai and Killa Abdullah. Abdul Qahar Wadan, a former National Assembly member from Killa Abdullah, said cultivation is rampant, allegedly backed by senior military officials and pro-government power brokers who take commissions from growers. Monawar Hussain, the district's chief administrative officer, rejected that claim, saying cultivation declined after an eradication campaign last year, but Alcis imagery from 2026 shows no clear evidence of eradication.

A farmer in Killa Abdullah, speaking anonymously, said growers pay bribes to local authorities through influential intermediaries. He alleged that when media coverage draws pressure from above, growers and their backers sometimes plant poppies on barren land so officials can destroy the crop and publicize the effort. Lala Jan Kakar, another Killa Abdullah resident, said insecurity, drought, and flash floods have devastated traditional fruit farming. "It's not possible to resist it anymore. The demand for poppies is much more than fruits, and so is the income," he said.

Experts say the surge in Pakistan has been driven by Afghan opium farmers crossing the border from Kandahar and Helmand to lease land, bringing money and expertise. "The Afghan poppy growers have both money and expertise," Kakar said, noting they invest millions of Pakistani rupees in solar-powered wells and share profits with landowners. Poppies can be harvested twice a year, and many farmers doubled their cultivated land in 2026, which Mansfield called "a stark indication" that much higher cultivation levels should be expected in 2027.

A similar pattern has taken hold in Iran, where Afghan farmers work as tenants and sharecroppers, drawing on family ties. Cultivation has been reported in provinces including Razavi Khorasan, Kermanshah, Lorestan, and Fars, but Sistan-Baluchistan, one of Iran's largest and poorest provinces, remains the main producing region. Satellite imagery from 2026 appears to show extensive poppy fields there, some using drip irrigation, a costly investment that suggests growers who planted in late 2025 expected little risk of eradication. "Unlike in Afghanistan, where they cultivated a variety of crops, these farmers are increasingly devoting large plots in Pakistan and Iran entirely to poppy," Mansfield said, describing a shift "from mixed farming to large-scale poppy monoculture." Iranian authorities, preoccupied with the war against the United States and Israel since late February, have been unable or unwilling to destroy the 2026 crop, and experts expect cultivation to rise further in 2027 as the economy teeters and the province's separatist insurgency intensifies.

Opium cultivation also appears to be rebounding inside Afghanistan despite the ban. Production is concentrated in northeastern Badakhshan Province, estimated to account for around half of national output, and several southwestern provinces. Driven by drought, debt, and economic hardship, farmers in Badakhshan and Helmand have protested and defied the ban even under forceful enforcement. "In 2026, poppy cultivation remained widespread across Badakhshan's rainfed and irrigated land," Mansfield said, adding that southwestern cultivation almost doubled between 2025 and 2026, though it stayed limited and was concealed within wheat fields and behind compound walls.

Hostile reactions to eradication suggest the Taliban is wary of provoking unrest as the economic crisis deepens, and a directive barring home searches for poppy or opium without a court order appears to be a significant concession. "But there is a clear risk: Growing numbers of farmers in the southwest may read the concession as a signal that the authorities will tolerate cultivation beyond walled compounds," Mansfield warned. "If so, Afghanistan could see a dramatic rise in opium production in 2027." Mansfield also noted that rising drug production both reflects and fuels regional violence, saying armed groups "compete for tax revenues from the drugs trade and other cross-border activities, including people smuggling and trade in fuel, minerals and other goods."