Drug addicts stare through an overcrowded prison with empty eyes and shaven heads. Without medication, without treatment, the Taliban forced them into cold turkey for 45 days. You have arrived, in the last circle of Kabul’s heroin hell.
Poverty and war have been driving people in for decades Afghanistan into drug addiction. The country is the world’s largest and by far the largest producer of opium and heroin. But since the Stone Age Islamists Taliban took power last August, the problem has only gotten worse.
In 2015, before the Stone Age Islamists ruled, up to 2.3 million Afghans (around five percent of the population) took drugs. There are no official estimates now, but the number of addicts has risen, UN expert Dr. Zamel for sure.
► Because: After the holy warriors seized power, the West refused to pay any financial aid. The economy has collapsed, around ten million Afghans cannot even afford one meal a day.
On the hills outside Kabul, addicts smoke opium, heroin and meth
An Afghan blows heroin into a dog’s nose with a plastic bottle
In the capital, Kabul, hundreds of men lie under bridges, on hills and even in sewers. Pumped full of heroin, opium and meth, they try to forget their suffering. Some of them are already dead. Others would like to be. “It’s okay to die,” an addict tells an AP reporter. Another blows a dog’s muzzle with a plastic bottle. In Afghanistan even the animals are dependent.
Those who die of an overdose at the drug meeting points are simply left there
Taliban regularly imprison addicts
For years, the Taliban financed their war against the Afghan government with drug trafficking. Now that they are in power, they are cracking down on opium growers and addicts.
The Islamists burn fields full of opium poppies, from which opium and heroin are extracted. Again and again they arrest addicts and force them to rehab on former military bases, which are more like prisons – like the government before them.
The Taliban shave the heads of the addicts in rehab
There is no treatment or even medication for the inmates
On two evenings in June alone, the Taliban captured around 1,500 junkies. In the overcrowded prisons their heads are shaved, then the addicts are left to themselves and their withdrawal. There is no treatment or even medication. Because of the lack of financial aid, there is hardly enough food.
The prisoners stay there for 45 days. Then countless of them go back to heroin on the hills and under the bridges of Kabul. A week after the arrest of 1,500 addicts, the fixer hangouts are full of people. It’s normal,” one of the addicts tells the AP reporter under a bridge. “It’s getting bigger every day and it never stops.”
No matter how many addicts the Taliban lock up in prisons, the drug meeting points keep filling up
