By Darrin Simmons
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East
HERAT, Afganistan-A recent report from the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs has discovered that one in ten Afghani households has at least one drug user. In Herat, it is one in five.
Known as an area of stability and progress in Afghanistan, Herat has become one of the world’s most addicted societies as a global leader in opium production. Total number of drug users in Afghanistan is estimated to be 1.6 million, which is about 5.3 percent of the population.
The use of opiates has doubled from 2005 to 2009, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, with the number of heroin users jumping to more than 140 percent. However, government funding for treatment and outreach is less than $4 million a year with most treatment programs relying heavily on $12 million a year in extra international funding.
Despite the growing severity in recent years, the drug crisis in Afghanistan is nothing new. International health officials claim it spawns from the traditional use of opium for medication. One of the earliest challenges Afghan security forces had to overcome was a public image as a “band of opium-addled thieves.”
“This is a tsunami for our country. The only thing our drug production has brought us is one million drug users” stated Dr. Ahmad Fawad Osmani, the director of drug demand reduction for the Ministry of Public Health
Rural areas have seen the highest use and worse conditions with drug use as high as 30 percent of the population, based on hair, urine, and saliva studies accumulated by authors of a recent urban study.
To make matters worse, the National Directorate of Security (NDS) recently fired 65 officers after discovering that they were addicted to heroin. “We have sacked 65 employees who were addicted to heroin and our efforts will continue,” stated the Rahmatullah Nabil, the acting head of NDS.
The men were discovered by way of a project implemented to weed out drug users from the NDS ranks. The program started in Kabul but will soon be expanding to NDS staff across all of the country’s 34 provinces, said Nabil.
Another method used in the fight against opium has been the success of saffron, a spice fetching thousands of dollars per kilogram. It is one of the few crops that Afghanistan can use to compete with the profits of opium cultivation. However, lack of accessible flights and border control of potential businessmen have hindered the saffron market
For more information, please see the following:
Sydney Morning Herald-Junkie ghettos tell of country’s growing addiction-03 November 2013
New York Times-That Other Big Afghan Crisis, the Growing Army of Addicts-02 November 2013
Stars and Stripes-Options limited for broke, addled and hopeless on Afghanistan’s heroin highway-30 October 2013
Reuters-Afghan intelligence agency sacks 65 ‘heroin addicts’-22 October 2013
