Faizabad, Afghanistan, Dec 1 (AFP/APP): More than 100 people have been arrested for growing poppy in northeastern Afghanistan, police said Sunday, in an area that has previously resisted a Taliban ban on the crop.

“During an operation today, the forces of the department arrested more than a hundred people, including residents of various villages… while cultivating poppy,” Shafiqullah Hafizi, the director of the police’s counter-narcotics department in the province of Badakhshan.

“These people were introduced to the primary court of Badakhshan province along with their files so that a legal trial could be held against them.”

In 2022, the Taliban government, on the orders of its Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, banned opium poppy production across Afghanistan, which at the time was the world’s top-producing country.

The ban caused a shift in the centre of poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, from the southern strongholds of the Taliban authorities to northeastern provinces, including Badakhshan.

  In May, clashes between farmers and brigades sent to destroy their poppy fields resulted in several deaths in the province.