Afghanistan’s opium fields are withering, and with them a major pillar of the global narcotics economy. According to the latest United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) survey, poppy cultivation has fallen drastically since the Taliban’s nationwide ban, reshaping regional trafficking patterns and driving price volatility across South and Central Asia.

The Taliban, for its part, has hailed this collapse as proof of restored order and moral discipline. If the ban holds, it will represent in fact one of the most effective counternarcotics measures in modern history — something the NATO occupation never managed, in two decades.

However, sudden contraction in the world’s most profitable illicit commodity may have unintended effects, considering that, within the narcotics economy, a parallel system exists — one partly controlled by external actors, intelligence networks, and private contractors. Here some context is needed.

One may recall that Afghanistan’s entanglement with the opium trade did not begin with the Taliban nor end with their fall in 2001. Rather, it is intertwined with decades of war, covert operations, and intelligence patronage. Allegations have long persisted that elements of the US intelligence apparatus — chiefly the CIA — have tolerated, abetted, or profited, directly or indirectly, from Afghan narcotics flows.

These claims, far from being mere propaganda or conspiracy theories, have been substantiated by Western sources such as The New York Times, historian Alfred McCoy, and even congressional testimony. Organized crime remains a key link in the Western intelligence apparatus, as I’ve........

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