Howz-e-Madad: While the economy edits on the verge of destruction, vendors in the Opium market in South Afghanistan say prices for their items have skyrocketed since the Taliban takeover.
Deploy the knife into a large plastic bag filled with four kilograms (nine pounds) of what looks like chocolate mud, safe, who was asked to use a fake name, extract a lump and put it in a small cup suspended on a primus fire.
Poppy resin quickly began to boil and melt, and he and his colleague Mohammad Masanoom could be displayed to buyers that their opium was pure.
“It’s illegal (forbidden) in Islam, but we don’t have other choices,” said Masioour, on the market in the Arid plain from Howz-e-Madad, in Kandahar province.
Since the Overran Taliban Kabul on August 15, the price of opium – which was converted into heroin in Afghanistan, Pakistan or Iran before flooding the European market – has more than tripled.
Masoom said smugglers now pay 17,500 pakistani rupees ($ 100, 90 euros) per kilogram.
In Europe, it has a road value of more than $ 50 per gram.
When he sat under the canvas suspended from four shares to protect valuables from sunburn, he said prices before the Taliban takeover stood up just one third of what he could make today.
Speaking to AFP in his field a few kilometers away, Poppy Farmer Zekria confirmed that prices had skyrocketed.
He said his opium was more concentrated – and therefore with better quality – rather than masoom and safe because the flowers were picked at the start of the harvest season.
He said he now gets more than 25,000 PKR per kilo, up from 7,500 before the Taliban takeover.
Return to the market, hundreds of manufacturers, vendors and buyers chatting on green tea around the opium sacks and hashish, discussing prices soaring.
Weather, unsafe sense, political riots, and all border closure can affect opium prices that always fluctuate, but everyone seems to agree that it is a single statement by Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid last month which made the price take off.
At that time, he told the world that the Taliban did not want to see “every narcotics produced” – but added that international support is needed to allow farmers to stay away from trade.
Rumors that poppy-planting prohibitions will occur around the province, the fortress of the history of the Taliban and the production center of the country’s drugs and drug trafficking.
Buyers strengthen for towering shortcomings, “so the opium price soared,” Zekria said, who also used a pseudonym to avoid retribution.
But the 40-year-old player, who was like his father and grandfather spent a lot of his life grow poppy, said he did not believe Taliban “can eradicate all poppies (agriculture) in Afghanistan”.
In 2000, during the last sustainable task in power, the Taliban prohibited Poppy grow, declare it was banned under Islam, and hardly stopped plants.
After the US Ouster LED from the Taliban in 2001, Poppy Farming again breeded, even when the West poured millions of dollars into encouraging alternatives, such as Saffron.
Then, with the Taliban switched from ruling Afghanistan to rebellion against US-led troops, they rely on opium production to finance their rebellion.
In 2016, half of their income came from trade, according to the United Nations.
Afghan’s opium production has since remained high year after year, producing around 6,300 tons last year, the UN said.
Farmers in the south said it was impossible to eradicate trade, which was estimated by the United Nations worth $ 2 billion in annual income in Afghanistan.
“We know it’s not good but we don’t have enough water seeds (or),” he said.
“We cannot foster anything else now,” Masioom said, adding that other trade would be far more profitable.
Zekria, the only breadwinner in the family 25, agreed.
“Without opium, I can’t even cover my expenses,” he said, adding “there was no other solution except the international community helped us”.
With the United Nations warnings that one third of the country’s population faces hunger threats, the inhaled Islamists around the problem prohibit profitable practice.
In his office in Kandahar, Head of the Cultural Department of the Province of Maulvi Noor Mohammad Saeed told AFP that “haram and bad opium production for people”.
But said production that is prohibited will depend on the assistance received.
“If the international community is ready to help farmers not to plant Poppy, then we will prohibit opium.”