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From Our Own Correspondent: The Taliban's Opium War

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10/06/2023 GMT

The Taliban's Opium War

BBC World Service - From Our Own Correspondent, The Taliban's Opium War

A new clampdown on poppy growing hits some of Afghanistan's poorest farmers.

The Taliban crackdown on poppy farms; the aftermath of the Odisha crash; searching for Ukraine's missing children; and prices rise as Nigeria's new president goes off-script.

Pascale Harter introduces stories from correspondents in Afghanistan, India, Ukraine and Nigeria.

Opium poppies from Afghanistan have provided the raw materials for the world's heroin trade for decades, with successive governments failing to curtail this illicit crop. Now back in power, the Taliban have decreed a new ban on opium cultivation, sending patrols to destroy crops across the country - often leaving poor farmers with no other means of income. Yogita Limaye joined a patrol in Nangarhar province.

The scale of the recent rail disaster in the Indian state of Odisha was shocking: nearly three hundred people died and more than a thousand more were injured. Amid the chaos of the aftermath, Archana Shukla reported on the human losses, and spoke to many families desperate for news of relatives who'd been travelling that day.

The forcible removal of children from Ukraine to Russia, or Russian-controlled territory, has been a sinister element of Moscow's tactics during the invasion and occupation of the country. Sarah Rainsford has spent months tracing what really happened to these children - and met Ukrainian mothers and grandmothers who ventured into Russian territory to get them back. 

When Nigeria's new president, Bola Ahmed Tinubu was sworn in at the end of May, he called the occasion 'a sublime moment'. Few people expected any revelations or surprises in his inaugural speech - but when he went off-script, there followed a scramble for petrol across the country. Mayeni Jones weighs up the mood as Mr Tinubu took power.

Producer: Louise Hidalgo
Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith
Production Co-ordinator: Helena Warwick-Cross

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