Bangladesh, Dec. 3 -- As Afghanistan enforces a near-total poppy ban, Pakistans Balochistan emerges as the new center of a resurgent opium economy. State complicity, militant financing, and expanding trafficking routes now threaten to reshape the drug landscape of South and West Asia.

The collapse of Afghanistans opium economy under the Taliban has set off an unexpected and dangerous shift across the border. After the Taliban seized Kabul in August 2021, they moved quickly to impose a strict nationwide ban on poppy cultivation in April 2022, enforcing it aggressively across the country. Opium production in Afghanistan fell dramatically as a result. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime reported that cultivation dropped from 233,000 hectares i...