After more than 10 years of efforts to wean farmers off the crop, opium cultivation in Afghanistan has hit a record high.  It’s raising fears that the profits will be funneled to the Taliban insurgency, regional warlords jockeying for power before foreign troops leave, and corrupt officials in the government lining their pockets.

Poppies are the base crop for Opium and Heroin production.  This year, the UN office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC) reports that poppy fields cover 209,000 hectares of Afghanistan.  That’s up 36 percent higher than in 2012, and eclipses the previous record set in 2007, when farmers cultivated 193,000 hectares of the crop.

It’s taking over importance from legitimate farming because of growing insecurity as foreign troops pull back in preparation for withdrawing next year, a high opium price last year, and a growing lack of Afghan political will to tackle the problem.  Farmers in the largely undeveloped country can make A$155 for every kilogram of the crop.

One farmer in the southern province of Helmand, where almost half of Afghanistan's opium is grown and where Aussie gunners faced some of the fiercest fighting of the 12-year war, said he had no choice but to grow opium.

“We are lost,” said the farmer, Mullah Baran, who supports a family of twenty.  “I do not know what is legal and what is illegal in Afghanistan.  If I grow poppy, that is illegal, but if I pay a bribe, that is legal.”