CIA Tried To Sabotage Afghanistan’s Heroin Trade With Modified Poppy Seeds: Report

Last Updated:November 13, 2025, 10:24 IST

The modified seeds, while not genetically engineered, were selectively bred to produce poppies with lower alkaloid content.

Members of Taliban sit on a military vehicle during Taliban military parade in Kabul, Afghanistan. (IMAGE: REUTERS/REPRESENTATIVE)

The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) conducted a decade-long covert programme to sabotage Afghanistan’s multibillion-dollar heroin trade by secretly dropping modified poppy seeds across the country’s farmlands, a report in The Washington Post revealed.

Between 2004 and 2015, the CIA allegedly used British C-130 aircraft for nighttime dispersals of specially bred poppy seeds over Helmand and Nangarhar, Afghanistan’s two main opium-producing provinces. The goal was to weaken the potency of poppies used in heroin production and make the trade unprofitable, as per the report.

According to The Washington Post, 14 former US officials confirmed the existence of the classified mission, which was run by the CIA’s Crime and Narcotics Center with post-9/11 counterterrorism funding. One former US official told the paper, “It was out-of-the-box thinking- a nonmilitary solution to a deeply military problem."

A Secret War Over Seeds

The modified seeds, while not genetically engineered, were selectively bred to produce poppies with lower alkaloid content- the chemical base for heroin. The CIA hoped that over time, the altered plants would cross-pollinate with native poppies, reducing the overall potency of Afghanistan’s opium crop. The plan was so secretive that even some senior officials in the Pentagon and US State Department were reportedly unaware of it. Former Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s government was also kept in the dark.

At the time, Afghanistan was producing nearly 90 percent of the world’s heroin, a trade that funded the Taliban and entrenched corruption within the Afghan state.

Was CIA’s Operation Successful?

While some insiders described the programme as having “temporary success," others said it delivered little long-term impact.

“The juice wasn’t worth the squeeze," one participant admitted, pointing to the CIA’s mounting costs and the resilience of Afghanistan’s drug networks. A 2018 report by the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction concluded that no American counter-drug initiative- including this one- achieved lasting reductions in poppy cultivation.

“It was a clever idea but in the end, Afghanistan grew back stronger- just like the poppy fields," a former official said as per the report.

News world CIA Tried To Sabotage Afghanistan’s Heroin Trade With Modified Poppy Seeds: Report

Read More