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Published on: 02/19/2026 - 12:28 Modified on: 02/19/2026 - 12:28

Long a simple transit country, Pakistan is becoming a land of massive drug production and consumption. At issue: the upheaval caused by the return of the Taliban to power in Afghanistan in 2021.

A year later, the new Afghan regime brutally banned the cultivation of poppies, the raw material for opium and heroin. This decision led to a spectacular fall in Afghan production. Poppy production then moved to the Pakistani province of Baluchistan, on the border, which in a few years had become one of the new regional centers of illegal cultivation. At the same time, Afghan networks are turning massively to synthetic drugs. Result: methamphetamine produced in Afghanistan is now flooding the Pakistani market.

This new drug economy has direct and devastating consequences on Pakistani society, where addicts number in the millions.

A report by Shahzaib Wahlah and Ondine de Gaulle in Karachi.

Right of reply from the Pakistani government:

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