According to an investigation by Washington Postthe CIA carried out a covert operation as unusual as it was ambitious for more than a decade: bombard vast areas of the east with poppy seeds and southern Afghanistan. The flights, carried out exclusively at night with C-130 cargo planes, were part of the US attempt to stop opium cultivation in full war against the Taliban.
Afghanistan was for years the great world epicenter of this drug, the base of heroin. Nangarhar and Helmand provinces, two of the areas hardest hit by the conflict, They concentrated a good part of the production. That is where, according to the American newspaper and fourteen sources consulted, the peculiar “seed war” was centered.
The operation reportedly began in 2004 and lasted more than a decade. The plan was to disperse from the air millions of seeds developed specifically for this purpose: poppy varieties with very low levels of alkaloids, the key substance to make heroin. The objective was for these plants to mix with the local ones and end up imposing themselves on traditional crops.
Today It is not clear if the seeds used were genetically modified nor to what extent this experiment managed to alter Afghan production. The details remain shrouded in secrecy and little is known about the real effectiveness of the project, beyond the enormous logistical and scientific deployment that it involved.
The truth is that the opium harvest in Afghanistan has plummeted in recent years. The UN estimates that in 2025 the country will produce only 296 tons32% less than the previous year and 95% below levels prior to the cultivation ban imposed by the Taliban in 2022.
Despite the drop in supply, prices have not risen as one would expect. Experts from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime They believe that this could be due to the fact that the crop is moving to neighboring countries, where a significant increase in areas dedicated to poppies has been detected.
The real impact of that air operation remains unknown. What the report does reveal is the scope of US strategies to combat drug trafficking in Afghanistan: discreet, experimental tactics and as unusual as seeding an entire country from the sky.
