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Taliban

Volume 502: debated on Wednesday 9 December 2009

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what estimate he has made of the proportion of the Taliban's income which derives from the illicit trade in opium. (303037)

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) released the report Addiction, Crime and Insurgency: The Transnational Threat of Afghan Opium on 21 October 2009. In it the UNODC estimates that the Taliban in Afghanistan now derive between $90-160 million per year from taxing opium production. There are no accurate assessments of what proportion of the Taliban's income comes from the drugs trade. However, the UK assesses that the opium trade represents a significant proportion of the Taliban's income.