Positive Impact of Taliban’s Counter-Narcotic Efforts on Iran, Say Iranian MPs

A delegation of members of the parliament of Iran praised what they called “significant progress” in the Taliban’s in counternarcotics efforts.

During a meeting with the Taliban’s deputy prime minister Mawlawi Abdul Kabir on Monday, the delegation said that the Taliban’s measures in the fight against narcotics have had positive impacts on Iran.

Previously, the Iranian authorities had criticised the increase in the production of drugs under the rule of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The Taliban’s Prime Minister's office has shared the statement in which they quoted Iranian MPs as praising the group’s counternarcotics measures on social media platform X, and the Iranian embassy in Kabul has shared the same statement of the Taliban.

It seems that the authorities of the Islamic Republic have contradictory views about the Taliban and the narcotics issues. Not long ago, Eskandar Momeni, the Secretary General of Drugs Control Headquarters in Iran, had said that the production and trafficking of drugs in Afghanistan has increased nearly 50 times in two decades.

Momeni added that Afghanistan ranks first in drug production and second in industrial drug production in the world.

Momeni said that despite the promises of the Taliban to stop the production of narcotics, the cultivation and production of drugs have increased in Afghanistan.

After the takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021, the Taliban imposed a ban on poppy cultivation and touted its reduction as an achievement of the group. However, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime announced in a report that Afghanistan produced 80% of the world's opium in 2022.