The return of the Golden Crescent? Rising poppy cultivation across Southwest Asia

There are signs of increased levels of poppy planting in Afghanistan in 2026, especially in Badakhshan in northeast Afghanistan, where widespread cultivation has persisted despite the Taliban drugs ban. There are also changing patterns of poppy cultivation in neighbouring Pakistan and Iran where farmers from southwest Afghanistan are increasingly relocating to cultivate poppy in response to the Taliban’s efforts to restrict opium production. Of particular concern is the evidence of a further shift in both cultivation practices and scale, with large plots of drip-irrigated poppy in Sistan Balochistan province in Iran, and possibly across the border in Balochistan in Pakistan. In both areas farmers from southwest Afghanistan are playing a significant role in what is an unprecedented development in the region, and a further indicator of the limits of state power in the increasingly restive tri-border area between Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran.

Consequently, while many drug analysts and commentators focus on the risk synthetic opioids pose to consumers in Western Europe and consider widespread opium production in southwest Asia a thing of the past, evidence suggests a rapidly evolving situation in what used to be known as the “Golden Crescent”. One in which supplies of heroin to Europe are sustained because of substantial opium stocks in Afghanistan and the relocation of cultivation into Pakistan and Iran, as well as innovation in cultivation practices and processing, including improved conversions rates for opium to heroin, and widespread adulteration of opiates consumed in the region.