SOCIETY
Killing fields
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Afghanistan produces most of the world’s opium and its society is being ravaged by the malaise of drug addiction. ANUJ CHOPRA
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Photo: Anuj Chopra
Feeding his addiction: Kahlil waits for his turn to join the Nejat Centre.
Mohammad’s motivation to check into a drug rehab clinic was a very personal tragedy. Just last month, this 60-year-old saw one of his eight children, addicted for years to heroin, painfully wither away in front of his eyes. “He smoked nig
ht and day,” he says, grimacing. “I want to live. I want my other children to live.”
Along with Agha, 17, his eldest son, also an addict, Mohammad made a perilous four-day road trip to Kabul from his obscure village in Helmand province. They are both fortunate to be admitted in the Nejat clinic, the only drug rehab clinic in Kabul. It offers a residential treatment programme to addicts who spend weeks here going through the painful process of withdrawal.
But despite being funded by international donors, the number of patients who seek admission here far outstrips the treatment facilities here. With only 10 beds and few in-house specialists, they routinely turn away patients. There are over a 1,000 addicts on the waiting list.
Afghanistan produces 92 per cent of the world’s opium, making it the world’s largest poppy growing nation. The booming poppy cultivation is leaving the Afghan society ravaged by the malaise of drug addiction.
An earlier report issued by the UNODC in late 2005 put the number of drug users in Afghanistan at 920,000, nearly 3.7 per cent of Afghanistan’s population. Experts caution that this could be misleading in a society where drugs are taboo.
According to Afghanistan’s Ministry of Counter Narcotics (MCN), there are only 36 rehabilitation facilities for drug addicts in 22 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces. Many like Nejat clinic are massively overstretched and ill-equipped to deal with the overwhelming number of addicts. The major challenge, says Dr. Tariq Suleman, director of the Nejat Centre, is to reach the rural areas, where drug addiction is concentrated and treatment facilities most scarce.
Hostile reception
“Nearly 80 per cent addicts live in rural areas,” he says. A team of doctors and experts from the clinic travel to the countryside to spread awareness about the ill-effects of drugs. Often, they receive a hostile reception from addicts and poppy-growing farmers who think the de-addiction programme might eat into their profits.
Experts warn that high levels of unemployment in Afghanistan, war trauma, and large-scale bereavement are fuelling an appetite for the drug. “Thirty years of war and social disintegration,” Dr. Suleman says, “have left ordinary Afghans extremely vulnerable to anxiety, chronic depression and post-traumatic stress disorders. And the easy and cheap availability of opium, heroin and other drugs is creating a rapid dependency.”
To treat women, a team of women doctors and counsellors from the Nejat Centre visit their homes. The use of opium is so entrenched, says Nadira Yusuf, a counsellor, that women use opium as “medicine” to silence a wailing child, or even alleviate medical conditions such as tuberculosis, asthma or cold.
Since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, thousands of Afghan refugees are returning home from Iran and Pakistan — where heroin use is profligate — bringing their addictions home. Moreover, processing labs to refine opium into heroin, were until a few years ago based in neighbouring Iran and Pakistan. But now they are thriving inside Afghanistan, increasing the availability of drugs dramatically.
The number of Afghans involved in the illicit trade, either as farmers or dealers, rose from two million to nearly three million people, according to the U.S. State Department. Mohammed, a poppy farmer himself in Dogha village in Helmand province, says the use of drugs is common among Afghan farmers and their families, a majority of whom grow poppies because of the money involved.
Seven kg of sorghum, which he grows nine months a year, fetches Mohammad 25 Afghanis (approx. 50 cents); whereas seven kg of poppy, which he grows in the remaining three months, fetches him 25,000 (approx. $500).
And he isn’t likely to give up cultivating poppy, whether he gets rid of his addiction or not. “This money,” he says, “helps me feed my family.”
Exacerbating crisis
Forceful eradication of poppy by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DAE) is back-firing on the government as the move only pits Afghan farmers against NATO-led forces. Recently, Habibullah Qaderi, Afghanistan’s counter-narcotics minister, resigned from his post for failing to deal with the exacerbating drugs crisis.
The Senlis Council, an international policy think-tank, proposes licensing of opium for pharmaceutical purposes. In June 2007, it launched its “Poppy for Medicine” technical dossier that proposes a project model for licensing poppy cultivation that would transform cultivated poppy into poppy-based medicines, such as morphine.
But the U.S. government rejected this proposal stating that there is no legitimate world demand for legally produced opium from Afghanistan and also that the licit opium market is not lucrative enough to entice Afghan farmers.
Khalil, 25, gets his daily dose of low-grade heroin for as little as $2 a gram from a local peddler. Sitting opposite the historic Shahe Du Shamshera mosque in central Kabul, Khalil was among a bevy of beggars. Dressed in a salwar-kameez and skull cap, Khalil admitted to feeding his addiction to the “white powder” by begging; and, at times, stealing.
He took me to his haunt; an old, bullet-marked, Soviet era building, frequented by other addicts, all addicted in varied degrees to different forms of drugs — heroin, hashish, and a high-grade white crystal that costs $18 in the market.
As Khalil demonstrated, the most common technique to consume the drugs is to smoke it through a cigarette, or a shekhi shang. This involves heating a metal blade covered with opium. This releases thick fumes, which are inhaled through a cigarette.
Khalil has been an addict for more than 10 years, since his uncle casually asked him to try an opium puff when he was just 15. He understands the toll it has taken on his health. After a painful bout of illness two months ago, he says he registered at the Nejat Centre. “There’s a long list,” he says. “I am waiting for my turn.”
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