Afghanistan's Drug Addiction Soars

Sitting opposite the historic and grand Shahe Du Shamshera mosque in central Kabul, Khalil is surrounded by a bevy of beggars, all haggard and filthy. As cars whizzed by, tooting horns and belching smoke, many of them are chasing passers-by, pleading desperately for alms.

Begging is how Khalil, 25, admits he feeds his addiction to a particular "white powder" -- a low-grade heroine that he buys for as little as two US dollars a gram from a local drug peddler.

In his 'drug den' -- a bullet-pocked, shrapnel-scarred Soviet-era building destroyed during the Russian invasion -- Khalil demonstrates the most common technique used to consume the drug.

The building is frequented mainly by men who are addicted to varying degrees to addicts, all shady-looking, and addicted to varied degrees to different forms of drugs, including heroine and hashish.

Drug addiction

The World Drug Report 2007, a study by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) released on June 26, says there have been "significant and positive changes" in narcotics production and use almost everywhere in the world. "Recent data show that the run-away train of drug addiction has slowed down," the report reads.

In Afghanistan, however, the situation has been found to be quite the opposite.

The the world's largest poppy growing nation produces 92 percent of the world's opium.

Booming poppy cultivation is producing an Afghan society ravaged by 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 percent of Afghanistan's population of 27 million. More than 100,000 were women and over 60,000 were under the age of 15.

However, experts caution that the actual figures might be higher in a society where few openly admit to using drugs, which are forbidden by Islam.

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 of which are massively over-stretched and ill-equipped for dealing with the overwhelming number of addicts.

Rehab

Mohammad, 60, and his son Agha, 17, have both been fortunate to be admitted to the Nejat Centre, the only rehab clinic in Kabul. Funded by international donors, the Centre offers a residential treatment programme to addicts, who can spend weeks going through the painful process of withdrawal.

But the number of patients who seek admission here far outstrip the treatment facilities here -- there are few in-house drug addiction specialists and only ten beds. There are over a thousand addicts on the waiting list.

Mohammad's motivation to check into a rehab clinic was a very personal tragedy. Last month, this 60-year-old saw one of his eight children, addicted to heroine for years, painfully wither away in front of his eyes.

"He smoked night and day," he says. "I want to live. I want my other children to live."

Rural areas

The major challenge, says the director of the Nejat Centre Dr. Tariq Suleman, is to reach the rural areas of Afghanistan, where drug addiction is most concentrated and treatment facilities most scarce.

"Nearly 80 percent of addicts live in rural areas," he says. A team of doctors and experts from the clinic regularly travels to the country to spread awareness about the ill-effects of drugs, but very often they receive a hostile reception from poppy-growing farmers who fear the addiction programme will eat into their profits.

Experts warn that high levels of unemployment in Afghanistan, war trauma, and wide-scale bereavement are fuelling the population's appetite for drugs.

"30 years of war and social disintegration," says Dr. Suleman, "have left ordinary Afghans extremely vulnerable to anxiety, chronic depression and post-traumatic stress disorders. And in such a scenario, the easy and cheap availability of opium, heroine and other drugs is creating a rapid dependency on these harmful pharmaceuticals."

"Medicine"

The use of opium is so entrenched, says Ms. Nadira Yusuf, a female counsellor at the clinic, that women also use opium as "medicine" to silence a wailing child, or even alleviate medical conditions such as tuberculosis, asthma or the common cold.

Furthermore, since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, thousands of Afghan refugees have returned home from Iran and Pakistan -- where heroin use is also prevalent -- and brought their addictions with them.

Moreover, processing labs used to refine opium into heroin, which until a few years ago were based in neighbouring Iran and Pakistan, are now thriving inside Afghanistan, increasing the availability of drugs dramatically.

One-third of GDP

Last year, opium exports were estimated at 3.1 billion dollars, one-third of Afghanistan's GDP. Since 2001, the area under poppy cultivation has risen from 8,000 hectares to 165,000 hectares. In 2006, 60 percent more cultivable land was planted with opium compared to 2005, making the poppy harvest hit a whopping 6,100 tons.

A poppy farmer in Dogha village in the restive Helmand province in the south, the heart of Afghanistan's poppy growing region, Mohammad says the rampant use of drugs is common among farmers and their families, a majority of whom grow poppies because of their sheer profitability (Helmand province alone accounts for 42% of Afghanistan's opium).

For one hectare of opium poppy, farmers can earn nearly 10 times as much as with a cereal crop.

This year, Afghanistan will produce another bumper crop of opium, with the UNODC predicting another substantial increase over last year.

Vicious circle

Seven kilos of maize, which he grows for nine months a year, fetch Mohammad 25 Afghanis (approx. 50 cents) only, whereas seven kilos of poppies, which he grows in the remaining three months, fetch him 25,000 (approx. 500 dollars).

And whether he rids himself of his addiction or not, he's not likely to give up cultivating poppies. "This money," he says, "helps me feed my family."

The forceful eradication of poppies by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DAE) seems to be back-firing and serving merely to fuel the anger of Afghan farmers against the NATO-led forces, and to whip up support for the Taliban-led insurgency.

Considering the deluge of poppies on the Afghan market, the malaise of drug addiction can only be expected to exacerbate in Afghanistan.