The Nejat center, in Old Kabul, does not look like much. And that’s good. Men and women drug addicts come there incognito every day for a meeting of advice and motivation.
Encouragement is the only remedy offered at this drug rehab center to help them get rid of their addiction to opium, heroin or any other drug.
And this little clinic, these days, is doing everything to stay under the radar.
“Since the arrival of the Taliban, we have been trying not to attract attention. If we raise our hand to say what we are doing, we fear that the Taliban will suspend our activities. We want to avoid that. We have so much work, ”said Reza Muhammad Mazloomyar, director of programs at the Nejat center, on the phone.
“The situation has been difficult since the day President Ashraf Ghani fled and the Taliban took control [en août]. The Taliban say that according to Islam, drug users and those who are addicted should be punished. Our employees were initially afraid to come to work and they take risks every day. Our users are starting to come back, ”says Mazloomyar. Our interview cannot go on forever, for security reasons, he must get home before nightfall. Kabul is today the city of all dangers.
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I know the Nejat center from having done a report there in 2005. A report that shook me.
At the time, I had met five women addicted to opium there. Aged 17 to 70, these Afghan women diluted drugs in their tea. To put their grief to sleep after the loss of a husband, a child. To forget the incessant buzzing in the ears resulting from the explosion of a bomb. To stave off hunger.
And because the same physical and psychological pain kept their children from sleeping, they also gave them opium.
I had been overwhelmed by the courage they needed daily to face their demons and rid themselves of the cloud that clouded their minds and made them poor moms, by their own admission.
Female drug addiction is a huge taboo in Afghanistan. If a man takes drugs, he becomes an outcast; if a woman takes drugs, she dishonors her whole family, I have been told.
I was therefore doubly touched when the five drug addicted women agreed to lift their burqas – which gave them anonymity – to tell me about the misfortunes that had pushed them into the arms of opium.
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If the situation was worrying in 2005, today it is downright catastrophic. Last year, Afghanistan produced 85% of the world’s opium, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). The country exports a large part of it to Iran, Pakistan, the former USSR and Eastern Europe, but its population is also increasingly affected. More and more dependent. This is true for men, but also for women and children.
UNODC analyst Kamram Niaz notes that it is not easy to put numbers on the scourge. In times of war, polls are not very high on the priority list.
That said, it is estimated that nearly 10% of the Afghan population uses drugs or alcohol, or nearly 4 million people. Of this number, 1 million people are believed to use opiates. Across Canada, it is as if the entire population of Ottawa smokes opium. It’s downright an epidemic.
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In recent weeks, the Taliban have turned their attention to the most visible of Afghan drug addicts, those living in unspeakable conditions under a Kabul bridge, the Pul-e-Sukhta Bridge. They crowd them into hospitals where they have to detox with little or no access to methadone.
“In the process, many were beaten with sticks and iron bars by Taliban police,” said Mazloomyar, who fears this is only the start of a bloody crackdown.
He is not the only one to be afraid. Many of the drug dealers, he says, have been missing since the Taliban arrived. Production is also affected. As a result, the price of opium has tripled in recent weeks.
This sudden increase is a real problem for the centers which work with dependent people. To get out of the drug addiction spiral, you can’t stop using overnight.
These days, with the country’s economy on the brink of collapse and much of the population eats only one meal a day, detox patients face heartbreaking choices, between putting rice on the table or find their dose.
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For now, anyone with any connection to opium is waiting to see what the Taliban will do. The relationship of rigorous Islamists with the poppy is very complex. In 2001, before the US invasion of Afghanistan, they had succeeded in reducing production by two-thirds. Then, in the years that followed, they fueled their armed campaign against the Afghan army and Western troops largely through the income generated by opium. If they kill the goose that lays the golden eggs all at once, they risk worsening the country’s humanitarian crisis in rural areas that are favorable to them.
And they have little to offer in return for the Afghans who, after 40 years of war and uncertainty, use drugs to treat their suffering, visible and invisible. To self-medicate. In this specific case, religion can hardly replace the opium of the people.