Kabul (EFE).- More than four decades of war, an economic crisis and the unlimited supply of cheap drugs, in a country that meets 80% of the world’s demand for opium, push thousands of people in Afghanistan into a drug addiction the Taliban try to alleviate it by forcibly hospitalizing thousands of addicts.
But with a good part of the rehabilitation centers closed, after the fundamentalists seized power in August 2021 and the faucet of international humanitarian aid was closed, this campaign has caused overcrowding that the Taliban is trying to alleviate by opening of a new center this week with 5,000 beds.
Long-term campaign and overflow prices
The Delegate Ministry of Anti-Narcotics, under the Ministry of the Interior of the interim Taliban government, states that there are currently some 3.5 million drug addicts in Afghanistan.
To respond to this situation, the fundamentalists have forcibly interned 6,350 Afghans in rehabilitation centers as part of a campaign designed for the long term.
“So far we have collected and admitted 6,350 addicts in 32 provinces, within the framework of 18 rounds of this campaign,” an Antinarcotics spokesman, Nasir Mengad, told EFE.
This campaign, effective or not in a country that produces most of the world’s opium despite official declarations that its cultivation is prohibited, has placed great pressure on the rehabilitation centers that remain open.
The main center in Kabul has 1,000 beds, but the number of inmates is now four times its capacity, since most of the addicts forced to seek a cure by the Taliban were located in the Afghan capital.
“The capacity of our hospital is for a thousand addicts, but due to this campaign there are currently 4,000, which is giving us a lot of problems,” a psychologist from the center, Maiwand Hoshmand, told EFE.
There is a lack of beds and space, of course, but also food, clothing, medicine…
“This is an emergency situation and this is the main center for the rehabilitation of addicts, so we are trying to do what we can to rescue our compatriots,” Hoshmand said.
The number of young people turning to drug addiction has been on the rise in the past year in Afghanistan, Hoshmand said, and recidivism rates are devastating.
“The lack of awareness, unemployment and neglect of families push newly recovered people back to addiction,” he lamented.
The Taliban are focusing on internting people who are homeless and have often lost contact with their families due to addiction, according to the source, adding that the center’s typical program lasts about 45 days, although if the patients suffer from problems psychological their internment can be extended up to three months.
The concentration of patients and scarce resources led the Taliban to inaugurate 5,000 beds in a new center last Wednesday.
According to the state agency Bakhtar, the deputy prime minister of the interim government, Abdul Salam Hanafi, stated that treating addicts is “the moral responsibility” of fundamentalists, despite the fact that production was historically concentrated in areas controlled by the group before come to power and blamed the high number of drug addicts on the deposed government.
Back to life
Farid, 52, assured EFE that he was admitted by the Taliban in this center ten days ago.
“Life’s problems and musings pushed me into addiction” for the past ten years, he recounted, after looking for a job in conflict-torn Afghanistan.
“Most addictions arise because of unemployment, if more jobs were created there would not be so many addicts,” he judged.
For his part, Mohammad Azim declared himself happy to have been admitted to the center despite the harsh conditions.
“Without a doubt, I am happy, and I am grateful that at least here I live as a human, since my previous life (as a drug addict) was inhuman,” he told EFE.
Just as happy as Azim, after living for years “among oblivion, despair and death” under a bridge in the capital known for housing hundreds of people like him, an area that the government deposed by the Taliban evicted several times in the last two decades, only to see the addicts return.
The government of the fundamentalists also “cleaned” the infamous bridge, without success.
