The Taliban, who now dominate Afghanistan without question, have set out to end the scourge of drug addiction, even if only by force.
At dusk, battle-hardened fighters turned policemen roam the drug underworld in the nation’s capital. Beneath the bustling bridges of Kabul, amid heaps of garbage and filthy streams, Hundreds of homeless men addicted to heroin and methamphetamine are rounded up, beaten and forcibly taken to treatment centers. The Associated Press gained rare access to one of those raids last week.
The scene offered a glimpse of the new order under Taliban control. The men – many with mental illnesses, according to the doctors – sat against stone walls with their hands tied. They were told to stop using drugs or they would be beaten.
The aggressive methods were welcomed by some health workers, who have had no choice but to adapt to the Taliban government. “We are no longer in a democracy, this is a dictatorship. And the use of force is the only way to treat these people, ”said Dr. Fazalrabi Mayar, who works in a treatment center. He was referring specifically to Afghans addicted to heroin and methamphetamine.
Shortly after the Taliban took control of the country on August 15, the Taliban Health Ministry issued an order for those centers, emphasizing its goals of firmly controlling the addiction problem, according to doctors.
The detainees, lean and staring, were a reflection of lost Afghan lives by a checkered succession of war, invasion and famine in the country. They were poets, soldiers, merchants, peasants. Most of the world’s heroin comes from the great poppy fields of Afghanistan, and the country has become a major producer of methamphetamine. Both have caused a huge addiction problem across the country.
Old or young, poor or formerly wealthy, the Taliban view all addicts the same way: A stain on the society they want to create. Drug use goes against his interpretation of Islamic doctrine. Addicts are also stigmatized by the broader, and mostly conservative, Afghan society.
But the Taliban’s war on drugs is complicated by the prospect of economic collapse and impending humanitarian catastrophe.
Sanctions and lack of recognition have made Afghanistan, a country dependent on foreign aid for years, ineligible for financial support from international organizations that accounted for 75% of state spending. A grim record of human rights violations, especially in relation to women, it has made the Taliban unpopular with international development organizations.
The liquidity crisis has consolidated. Public wages are months behind, and the drought has exacerbated illness and food shortages. Winter will come in a few weeks. Without foreign funds, the government is dependent on customs and taxes.
The illicit opium trade is intertwined with the Afghan economy and its challenges. Poppy growers are part of an important rural community for the Taliban, and most depend on the harvest to make ends meet.
During the years of insurgency, the Taliban profited from the poppy trade by taxing traffickers, a practice that was maintained in many industries in the areas under their control.
An investigation by David Mansfield, an expert on drug trafficking in Afghanistan, suggests that the group earned $ 20 million in 2020, a small fraction of its income from other taxes. The group has always denied having ties to drug trafficking.
But the Taliban also imposed the only largely successful ban on the opium ban between 2000 and 2001, before the US invasion. Subsequent governments have failed to do so.
Previous governments also campaigned for the arrests of addicts. But the Taliban are more aggressive and feared.
On a recent night, several fighters searched a shelter under a bridge in the Guzargah area of Kabul. Shouldering rifles and whip cables, they ordered the men out of their filthy sheds. Some got out slowly, others were thrown to the ground. After another order to deliver their belongings came the sudden sound of lighters: the men preferred to consume all the drug they had left before it was confiscated.
A man struck a match under aluminum foil and his thin cheeks sank further as he absorbed the smoke. He stared into space.
Another man was reluctant. “They are vitamins!” He pleaded.
Taliban fighter Qari Fedayee tied the hands of another.
“They are our compatriots, they are our family and there are good people within them”, said. “God willing, the people in the hospital will be good to them and heal them.”
An old bespectacled man raised his voice. He announced that he was a poet, and if they let him go he would never use drugs again. He scribbled a few verses on a piece of paper to prove it. It did not work.
What led you to drugs? “Some things should not be counted,” he replied.
In the end there were at least 150 detainees. They were taken to the district police station, where all their belongings – drugs, wallets, knives, rings, lighters, a juice container – were burned because it was forbidden to bring them to the treatment center. As the men squatted nearby, a Taliban official stared into the smoke and ran the beads of a prayer necklace between his fingers.
At midnight they were taken to the Avicenna Medical Hospital for Drug Treatment on the outskirts of Kabul. The U.S. Army established the compound in 2003 as Camp Phoenix, a military base, but in 2016 it was converted into a drug treatment center. It is now the largest in Kabul, with room for 1,000 inmates.
The men were detained and bathed. Their heads were shaved.
A 45-day treatment program began there, said Dr. Wahedullah Koshan, chief psychiatrist.
Withdrawal awaited them, with little medical attention to relieve pain and discomfort. Koshan admitted that the hospital lacked alternative opioids, buprenorphine and methadone, normally used to treat heroin addiction. His staff have not been paid since July, but he noted that the Health Ministry had promised that the payments would come.
The Taliban have more ambitious goals. “This is just the beginning, then we will go after the producers, and we will punish them according to (Islamic) Sharia law,” said Qari Ghafoor, who led the patrol.
For Mansfield, the expert, the latest searches are a repeat of history. “In the 90s (when the Taliban ruled the country) they used to do the exact same thing,” he explained. The only difference is that now there are treatment centers, before drug addicts were made to stand in rivers or mountain streams in the belief that this would end the addiction.
Whether they can ban opium production is another story, he noted. Any significant ban will require negotiations with producers.
Mohammed Kabir, 30, who grows poppies in Uruzgan province, voluntarily entered the hospital two weeks ago. Demand from traffickers remains high, he said, and at harvest time in November, selling opiums is their only way to earn a living.
There are 700 patients in the hospital who roam the wards like ghosts. Some say they don’t give them enough food. Doctors say that hunger is part of the withdrawal syndrome.
Most of their families don’t know where they are.
There is a waiting room full of parents and relatives wondering if their missing loved ones are among those detained in the raids.
Sitara cries when she is reunited with her 21-year-old son, who has been missing for 12 days. “My son is my whole life,” she says through tears as she hugs him.
Back in the city, under a bridge in the Kotesangi neighborhood, addicts live precariously in the dark, in fear of the Taliban.
One night, they were smoking without caring next to a man’s body. Was dead.
They covered him with a cloth, but did not dare to bury him while the Taliban patrolled the streets.
“It is not important if some of them die,” said Mawlawi Fazullah, a Taliban official. Others will be cured. When they are cured, they can be free ”.
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