[War & Business] The Golden Crescent Region

A farmer in Afghanistan cultivating poppies, the raw material for opium. [Image source=EPA·Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Hyunwoo Lee] As political instability deepens in Afghanistan, the vast opium cultivation area along the eastern Afghan border, known as the ‘Golden Crescent,’ is attracting international attention. This region produces over 80% of the world's opium, which flows from China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region to northern Kashmir in India and western Pakistan. In particular, the Chinese government is reportedly very concerned about the large-scale smuggling of opium from this area into China.

It is said that opium cultivation began to concentrate in this region more than 200 years ago. In the 19th century, as the Qing Dynasty of China started importing large quantities of opium, neighboring countries around China began planting poppies, the raw material for opium. Among them, Afghanistan, blessed with natural conditions, is said to have had poppy flowers blooming since that time.

Opium originally was an ancient medicinal herb used as the source of morphine, a painkiller, and is mentioned in records from the ancient Mesopotamian civilization. Later, from the late 18th century, a technology to inhale concentrated opium liquid through a pipe was developed in China, and as opium dens became popular entertainment venues, opium transformed into a drug.

Especially, Britain, suffering huge losses in mass trade in the 19th century, began planting large quantities of poppies, which grow well in dry areas, in northern India and Afghan colonial territories, marking the beginning of the Golden Crescent region's history. The large amounts of opium cultivated in Afghanistan spread to major Chinese cities through the Xinjiang Uygur region, and as opium smuggling flourished, cities in the Xinjiang Uygur area began to grow significantly.

At that time, Qing governors in the Xinjiang Uygur region embezzled income from opium smuggling, leading to severe corruption. Dissatisfied, the Uygur people requested reinforcements from General Mohammad Yakub Beg, an Afghan Tajik warlord, who led a large army in 1864 to occupy the entire Xinjiang Uygur region and established the country of Kashgaria.

Yakub Beg signed peace treaties one after another with major powers such as Russia and Britain and invaded the Qing Dynasty, advancing into China's western inland regions. In response, the Qing Dynasty mobilized all national power in 1874 to launch an expedition to Xinjiang Uygur and succeeded in suppressing it after eight years. However, the Qing failed to check Japan's Meiji government. Taking advantage of this, Japan occupied Taiwan, forced Korea to open its ports, and laid the groundwork for continental invasion, which led to China's humiliating period of Japanese colonial rule.

From the perspective of modern China, which is currently confronting the United States across the Taiwan Strait, the modern history intertwined with the 19th-century Golden Crescent region is not merely a thing of the past. The world is closely watching how well China, which has taken a central role in reshaping the new order in Central Asia following the United States, can manage this situation.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.