| Afghan opium addicts pay a high price ISN Security Watch
03/13/2006
By Till Bruckner
[Printer Friendly Version]
As the Afghan government comes under increasing pressure to crack down on opium poppy cultivation in order to stem the flow of illegal drugs to Europe and North America, an increasing number of observers are warning of the social costs of rising addiction rates within the country itself. Last year, Afghan farmers produced an estimated 4,100 metric tons of opium, or 87 per cent of the total global supply. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Kabul, over 300,000 households, nearly 9 per cent of the total population, are involved in opium cultivation, and the opium economy produces more than half of the national gross domestic product (GDP). Up to 90 per cent of the heroin consumed in Europe is believed to have originated in Afghanistan. Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s government has publicly committed itself to reducing cultivation by over two-thirds by 2008, but results so far have been mixed. Despite dramatic reductions in some provinces, opium production fell by less than 3 per cent compared to 2004, largely because farmers in other areas expanded cultivation. Last year, over 100,000 hectares nationwide were planted with poppies. Opinion within Afghanistan is sharply divided over the criminalization and eradication of the country’s main export earner. Supporters of eradication usually argue that most of the benefits of the business end up in the war chests of major criminals and warlords, undermining government control. Critics of the government argue that the leadership is more responsive to the demands of its international sponsors than to the needs of its farmers at home, insisting that it is not Afghanistan’s responsibility to stop a business driven by foreign demand for illegal opium and heroin. However, a growing body of evidence points to the large - and increasing - social costs of rising addiction rates within Afghanistan itself. Around 150,000 people are thought to be addicted to opium, and a further 50,000 to heroin. “Addiction is definitely getting worse. It’s increasing daily,” Dr. Mohammad Zafar, Director of Drug Demand Reduction at the Ministry of Counter Narcotics, told ISN Security Watch. UNODC figures suggest that 5 per cent of the country’s total production might be devoted to meeting domestic demand. “We would not be so poor if it wasn’t for opium,” Niaz Ali, a middle-aged man from the Wakhi tribe, which is said to have some of the highest addiction rates found in the country, tells ISN Security Watch. Some experts believe that over one-third of Wakhi adults are addicts. Living in the remotest corner of Afghanistan, the mountainous “Wakhan corridor” that stretches out from the northeast of the country to touch China, the Wakhis have long struggled on the edge of subsistence. Today, widespread opium consumption is contributing to the area’s further impoverishment. While the use of opium in the Wakhan for medical or recreational purposes dates back centuries, if not millennia, addiction rates rocketed during Afghanistan’s protracted civil war. Following the Soviet withdrawal, ethnic Tajik troops of warlord Burhanuddin Rabbani occupied the Wakhan corridor. “Many of the people we interviewed told us that opium was used by the Mujahideen and their backers to finance the resistance war to Soviet occupation,” Gary E. Poole, a psychologist who has conducted research into local addiction patterns, told ISN Security Watch. While most income presumably came from exporting opium and heroin, Rabbani’s forces also had a sideline in local retail. “They said, ‘Sell us ten sheep, and we will give you opium,’” recalls Ali Akbar, an ethnic Kyrgyz who owns large herds of sheep and yaks. “If I said, ‘I don’t need opium’, they would just point their guns at me and take the sheep for free.” Asked why his tribe did not fight back, he just shrugs. “Back then, those guys were the government,” Ali Akbar says. “What could we do?” More than a dozen Wakhi and Kyrgyz living along the corridor recounted for ISN Security Watch similar scenarios of being forced to purchase opium. “There are definitely more opium users now than there were when I first arrived,” recalls Adil, a trader from the lowlands who has been coming to the Wakhan to sell textiles, carpets and sugar in return for livestock for 15 years. “When I started, there were only a handful of addicts amongst the Kyrgyz [who live further up the valley]. Now you find one in nearly every tent.” Adil adds that the crushing boredom of life in the Wakhan may be a key reason why so many people get hooked. “You go through these villages in summer, and there is no work, nobody is doing anything for months,” he says. Jehanzeb Khan, a demand reduction expert for the UNODC, sees the reasons elsewhere. “The main reason for higher opium addiction in some areas than others is the harsh weather, hard work by women, and the non-availability of health facilities,” he suggests, adding that opium was traditionally used as a treatment for over seventy different diseases. In the district capital, the village of Khandud, only five out of over 40 shops are open. Cows walk the high street, and the arrival of a minibus is an event that draws a crowd of two dozen men. Even by Afghan standards, Khandud appears to be an exceptionally sleepy backwater, devoid of economic activity. In fact, the real business takes place behind the scenes. At sunrise, a grizzled old farmer is already waiting outside a shop with a sack of wheat, harvested the previous day and brought straight from his threshing floor. The shopkeeper weighs his wheat, and both disappear for a while. Minutes later, the farmer emerges empty-handed, with a sticky black lump hidden in his pocket. He has exchanged 50 kilograms of food for just over half an ounce of opium, an amount that will last him a few days at the most. The opium economy acts as a drain on the Wakhan corridor. “A few people used to grow it in Rabbani’s time,” remembers Kari. “But now, due to religious prohibition by the Agha Khan [the spiritual leader of the Wakhi], pressure from the government, and low prices, cultivation has completely stopped.” As a result, one of the poorest areas in Afghanistan is exporting wheat and livestock to pay for opium imports, leaving less food for local consumption. While rich farmers and livestock owners can afford heavy smoking habits - some are said to smoke over an ounce a day - the poor often end up selling their assets. “Some people have sold everything to feed their addiction,” Niaz Ali explains. “First their animals, then their carpets, then their daughters, then their land. Some of them now have nothing left and beg bread from their neighbors.” A 2004 research team from the Agha Khan foundation found one village where half of the land had been lost to opium traders. Farmers continued working the land that had been theirs in a form of bonded labor. “We were shocked at the prevalence of addiction,” recalls Poole, who participated in the study. Addiction can start very early; many parents give their babies opium to stop them crying or help them to go asleep. Poole’s research team encountered an 11-year-old girl who had been prostituting herself since the age of nine to feed her habit of seven grams a day. While most addicts belong to the Ismaeli sect of Islam, dealers are usually Sunni Muslims. Few Wakhis can be found among the shopkeepers in Khandud bazaar, or among the mobile traders who supply far-flung settlements by donkey or yak. The profits of the opium economy chain - cultivation, transport, and sale - end up in the pockets of outsiders. “The opium trade was always in the hands of itinerant traders and shopkeepers in Khandud from outside the area,” Professor Nazif Shahrani of Indiana University, who studied the area prior to the Soviet invasion, told ISN Security Watch. “In that respect, the situation seems not to have changed over the last quarter of a century.” A study of the local opium economy by Dr. Adam Pain, a British researcher, alleges that key figures in the large-scale trade in the Wakhan include government employees and senior security officials. Observations made by ISN Security Watch support this claim. “The head of education in the district is widely reported to run an opium distribution system through teachers,” the report reads, going on to note that the already large profit margins of traders are further boosted by barter exchange at skewed rates, and by the supply of opium on credit at usurious interest rates. Several traders confirm that opium is by far their most profitable merchandise. “You can get a sheep for under two ounces from the Kyrgyz,” a dealer from outside the region enthuses, adding that he will later sell the same sheep for US$80 in Kabul. Opium smokers who try to kick their habit find little outside support. The government’s official drug control strategy paper, a five-year plan adopted in 2003, envisions reducing domestic demand through prevention, treatment, rehabilitation, and social integration, but funding is difficult to come by. At present, the entire province of Badakhshan has only one treatment facility with ten beds, located in the capital. “Many of our clients travel here by donkey or on foot for three days or more in order to get treatment,” says Dr. Bayan Shairshar, who coordinates drug rehabilitation activities for the German donor GTZ, which supports the project. Patients have to wait for 60 days before they are admitted for residential care. There is no money available to enlarge the compound to meet the strong demand. Not long ago, several treatment centers in Badakhshan run by a different organization had to be closed because their funding ran out. The province’s second treatment facility, which is scheduled to open soon, will only cover three villages in the Wakhan. The NGO that will run this facility asked not to be identified in this article. So far, not a single case of heroin addiction has been reported in the Wakhan, and many locals firmly believe that there are no users in the district. In contrast, the town of Sheghnan, a major transit point on the Tajik border, is reputed to contain a sizeable addict population; heroin use in Badakhshan tends to spread along international trafficking routes. “Nobody here takes heroin,” one Khandud shopkeeper involved in supplying smugglers insists. The following night, he is ill with malaria. Believing his guest asleep, he whispers to his brother, “Let me smoke a bit of powder so I can sleep.” Silently, the two men rise to their feet and leave the room. Till Bruckner is a freelance journalist and development consultant based in Afghanistan. He has previously worked in Bolivia, Sudan, and the Republic of Georgia.
Other Stories:
|