epa10530088 Taliban security members destroy an opium poppies field at Dand district of Kandahar, Afghanistan, 18 March 2023. The Taliban recently cleared 3 acres of land in Kandahar for poppy cultivation. This is part of a larger effort to ban poppy cultivation in the province, with hundreds of acres of land now cleared of poppy plantations. The Ministry of Interior of Afghanistan has conducted 3,700 anti-narcotics operations in the past year, arresting 4,650 drug criminals and destroying 148 alcohol and other drug processing factories, seizing 404 tons of various drugs, and clearing 1147 hectares of land from drug cultivation, according to the Taliban's deputy minister of Interior Abdul Haq. EPA-EFE/STR