Security Code: Afghanistan is starving—and its farmers are fighting to save the poppy

11/07/2025 12 min Episodio 8570
Security Code: Afghanistan is starving—and its farmers are fighting to save the poppy

Listen "Security Code: Afghanistan is starving—and its farmers are fighting to save the poppy"

Episode Synopsis

Two years ago, Afghanistan’s Taliban regime banned farmers from growing the poppy—the plant whose resin yields opium, then heroin. The severity of the ban saw poppy fields wither away. But promised alternative crops haven’t materialised, and hundreds of thousands of poor peasant families are literally risking their lives to grow poppies again.

More episodes of the podcast ThePrint