When we think about Afghanistan and drugs, one substance comes to mind: opium. Indeed, the country has essentially had a monopoly on the global production of opiates (albeit with some periods of significant interruption) during most of the past 40 years. In 1999, Afghanistan produced 79% of the world’s supply of illicit opium; nearly ten years later in 2018, that figure had risen to 84%.
Growing opium poppy has a long history in this region – known as the Golden Crescent – which comprises Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran. However, since the latter part of the 20th century, production has essentially centred on Afghanistan, while Pakistan and Iran constitute vital trafficking routes, and also major markets for Afghan heroin that was increasingly being manufactured in-country.
What is perhaps less well known is that for the past two decades, Afghanistan has become a hub for the production of quite a different drug: methamphetamine. Compared to opium poppy cultivation, which requires large areas of land for growing, meth production requires less land and lower labour costs; manufacturing can be done in small facilities, away from the eyes of the authorities. The drug economy is highly embedded in Afghanistan and its neighbouring states, with production and trafficking networks already well established. The diversification of Afghan drug production into synthetic drugs was therefore only a small step to take.
Initial production followed methods established in other methamphetamine-producing regions: importing over-the-counter (OTC) drugs like pseudoephedrine as the primary precursor for manufacture. But soon a natural precursor was found: Afghanistan’s mountainous terrain is the perfect habitat for the growth of the wild ephedra plant from which the precursor chemical, ephedrine, can be extracted. From 2016 onwards, lab owners switched to using the cheaper ephedra – which cut the production costs of meth by more than 50%.
And there was a strong regional market for the drug. Neighbouring Iran has long had one of the world’s highest rates of opium consumption and is a major consumption hub for Afghan opium as well as a strategic node in the global opiate trafficking network. But in more recent years there’s been an explosion in demand for stimulants, particularly methamphetamine. With the Iranian government cracking down on production within the country, Afghanistan was in prime position to fill that gap – and it wasn’t long before cheap Afghan meth flooded the market, with record seizures recorded in 2022.
The Return of the Taliban
Afghanistan’s role as one of the world’s centres of drug production, which had been cemented since the late 1980s, was interrupted by the first ascension to power of the Taliban in 1996. During their first rule, from 1996-2001, poppy cultivation may have fallen by up to 99%. Production was displaced and spilled over into its neighbours. Previously one of the world’s biggest producers, Pakistan was declared “virtually poppy free” in 2000. But the Taliban’s prohibition saw its re-emergence, including, for the first time, in the border province of Balochistan, where some Afghan farmers moved to avoid repercussions from the Taliban.
These trends reversed when the Taliban were overthrown, helped by eradication efforts of the Pakistani authorities, who cracked down on poppy cultivation in the border region. The fall of Afghanistan into general lawlessness meant the drug economy could boom once again, with opium output peaking at record levels in 2017. Meth produced in the country flooded not only markets in neighbouring states, but also those as far away as Europe, East Asia and Australia.
And then, in August 2021, the United States withdrew its presence from the country – and the Taliban subsequently swept back to power. As before, this had a momentous impact on the Afghan drug economy – and its neighbours. Stringent eradication programmes saw opium production fall by 93% in 2024 as compared to output in 2022.
Meth production didn’t fare much better. The Taliban closed the main hub for the sale of ephedra, the Abdul Wadood Bazaar in Farah Province in the western part of the country in 2022. Between 2022-2023, 292 ephedrine labs were closed. Legal restrictions and punitive measures were tightened further in 2023. Wishing to escape the claws of the state, some ephedrine manufacturers have relocated to the central Afghan Highlands.
But in what seems to be a recurrence of some of the trends seen during the first Taliban era, opium production, joined this time by the more recently established methamphetamine industry, is creeping across the border into the broader Balochistan region, which comprises parts of Pakistan and Iran.
The importance of Balochistan
According to leading researcher on the Afghan drug trade, David Mansfield, the way the meth industry has moved across porous borders in the Balochistan region follows the way that opium production has similarly shifted.
“On the poppy side, [opium production] has set up in Balochistan using Afghan skills and services. There’s lots of cross border movement and the smuggling economy is thriving across the region as a whole, and many Afghans live in these areas,” he told TalkingDrugs. Something similar has happened with meth after the Taliban prohibition: “those who were involved in producing ephedrine use preexisting contacts to set up in Balochistan,” Mansfield said.
This new production is typically being done using locally-sourced ephedra. Mansfield explained that there’s “been a history of ephedra harvesting in the region…the Department of Forestry has allowed some ephedra crops to be harvested under licence for pseudoephedrine production in a large pharmaceutical factory in the city of Quetta.” Production can therefore continue on a similar scale, and with similar efficiency, as it had previously in Afghanistan before the Taliban crackdown.
Balochistan is Pakistan’s largest province, but it’s also its poorest, despite being heavily resource-rich. The region is characterised by its deeply embedded criminal economy and generalised lawlessness, given the weak grip of the central state on the province. “The fact that we’re seeing large ephedrine labs, of the sort that we saw in Afghanistan pre-Taliban, is a statement of the inability of the central government to do anything about it. They indicate a certain confidence on the part of the manufacturers,” said Mansfield.
Since the creation of the state of Pakistan, Balochistan has been home to a long-running separatist insurgency, with the principal actor being the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA); Islamist groups, such as the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) are also active in the region. The area has also historically served as a crucial route for the smuggling of Afghan heroin – and these drugs have long been a source of weapons funding for groups internationally designated as terrorists.
Recent events have seen an escalation in insurgent activities in the region. The BLA has greatly intensified its attacks on Pakistani infrastructure and civilians in 2025. And since the Afghan Taliban returned to power, the TTP has also been stepping up its militant operations.
In January 2026, Pakistan declared war on Afghanistan after accusing it of hosting TTP militants carrying out attacks on Pakistani soil. Balochistan is at the centre of this fighting – and there’s recently been evidence of an emerging strategic alliance between the BLA and TTP. The ongoing Iran war, if it were to spill over into Pakistani Balochistan, may further empower separatist movements in the region.
An evolving meth economy during war
Insurgent groups in the region and beyond have been funding war with drugs for decades, from the growth of opium to fund anti-Soviet mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 1980s, or the Taliban’s own involvement through raising taxes on both the opium and more recently the methamphetamine trade. The emergence of methamphetamine production in the Golden Crescent allows an interesting comparison to be made with the world’s other infamous centre of opium production: Myanmar, a country also ravaged by ongoing war and ethnic strife. In Myanmar, methamphetamine production has reached record highs since the outbreak of civil war in 2021.
Much like Balochistan, Myanmar shows that a weakened state and lack of law enforcement in the context of a conflict involving multiple groups offer the perfect conditions for the further expansion of the drug economy. And it’s no surprise that methamphetamine production – which requires limited space, is highly mobile, and is both cheap to produce while also fetching a price per gram that exceeds heroin – seems to be thriving under these conditions. While the Taliban’s crackdown appears to have been largely effective, it has triggered some unforeseen consequences in bordering regions.
Now, post-Taliban prohibition, we’re seeing the burgeoning methamphetamine industry in neighbouring Balochistan pick up where the Afghan industry left off, a “massive new opportunity that has emerged,” according to Mansfield. As the region destabilises in the context of two ongoing wars, “we’re seeing increased activity [along smuggling chains] in the Balochistan area.”
With the Pakistani and Iranian economies collapsing, Mansfield believes that the signs point to growing competition over these illicit value chains “between armed groups, as they compete over monies and territory.” If current trends continue, a destabilised Balochistan, much like Afghanistan before it, seems likely to cement itself a global centre for methamphetamine production – a drug for which the world’s appetite only appears to be growing.
