Green energy complicates the Taliban's new battle against opium

One Afghan government after another has pledged to stamp out opium production and trafficking, only to prove unable to resist billions of dollars in illicit profits.

Water pumps powered by cheap and highly efficient solar panels are able to drill deep down into rapidly dwindling desert aquifers. The solar panels have helped generate bumper opium harvests year after year since farmers in southern Afghanistan's poppy-growing belt began installing them around 2014. The Taliban, for their part, have condemned opium as anti-Islamic, as Afghanistan's poppy crop sustains addicts in Europe and the Middle East, as well as a huge number inside Afghanistan. But given their own deep ties to opium smuggling during the insurgency, Taliban leaders are walking a fine line between hypocrisy and holiness.

Opium farmers now rely on at least 67,000 solar-power-fed water reservoirs across Afghanistan's desert south-west, according to a European Union-funded research project by David Mansfield, a consultant who has studied illicit economies and rural livelihoods in Afghanistan for two decades. The Taliban have taken aim at some solar-powered pumps. On May 13, the governor of Helmand province, adjacent to Kandahar province in the opium belt, ordered police to confiscate panels and pumps so that newly planted poppies would die in parched fields.

After investing about US$500 on seeds, fertiliser, labour and other expenses, Agha said, he hoped to gross about US$5,000 after selling the 20kg of opium he expected to harvest this spring.India's record heroin haul shows drug trade out of Afghanistan will continue under Taliban The government has indicated that it will allow the spring harvest because it was already underway. But the Taliban have vowed to crack down on farmers who try to cultivate any new crops.

Singapore Latest News, Singapore Headlines

Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.

'Kind of complicated': Growing grapes in the world's driest desertSAN PEDRO DE ATACAMA (Chile) — In the middle of Chile's Atacama desert, the driest in the world, Hector Espindola has an unexpected job: he runs a vineyard.
Source: TODAYonline - 🏆 1. / 99 Read more »

Battle hots up between US and Chinese firms for slice of Asean's data centre marketMust be crazy to hand over your data to the CCP criminals and paying for it at the same time.
Source: STForeignDesk - 🏆 4. / 71 Read more »

Ukraine battle expands as Kyiv launches counteroffensive
Source: STForeignDesk - 🏆 4. / 71 Read more »

After 21 people were killed, the Republican party’s newest enemy is … doorsAfter the horrific school shooting in Texas, some Republicans are choosing to channel their energy towards door control to deflect from gun reform
Source: YahooSG - 🏆 3. / 71 Read more »

Cash-strapped Sri Lanka gets Russian oil to ease shortagesCash-strapped Sri Lanka took delivery Saturday of Russian oil -- which could soon be subject to a European embargo -- to restart operations at the country's only refinery, the energy minister said.
Source: YahooSG - 🏆 3. / 71 Read more »

Russia takes small cities, aims to widen east Ukraine battleAs Russia asserted progress in its goal of seizing the entirety of contested eastern Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin tried Saturday to shake European resolve to punish his country with sanctions and to keep supplying weapons that have supported Ukraine's defense. The Russian Defense Ministry said Lyman, the second small city to fall this week, had been “completely liberated” by a joint force of Russian soldiers and Kremlin-backed separatists, who have waged war for eight years in the industrial Donbas region bordering Russia. Ukraine’s train system has ferried arms and evacuated citizens through Lyman, a key railway hub in the east.
Source: YahooSG - 🏆 3. / 71 Read more »