Offering hope to Afghan addicts
by Bilal Sarwary
On a hot summer's night in Pakistan, 33-year-old Rahima was having a
fight with her husband in a refugee camp. It came to an end when
Rahima's husband forced her to consume a small opium capsule.
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Dr Toorpaikay Zazi |
"This is how I became an opium addict," says Rahima. "He gave it to
me thinking this might end the night's fight.
"However, I became addicted to it by mistake - a mistake that cost me
dearly because my baby died four days after birth."
In the years to come, Rahima's life only continued to get worse.
"No one respected me. When I went to weddings and family events,
people made fun of me and called me 'the addict'," she says.
After the fall of the Taleban, Rahima returned to Afghanistan and
heard talk of the Sanga Amaj Drug Treatment Centre for women in western
Kabul, funded by the US state department through the Afghan Ministry of
Counter Narcotics.
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The anti-drugs message at the clinic is kept clear and
simple |
The first of its kind in the area, the Sanga Amaj centre is named
after a female journalist who was mysteriously shot dead in Kabul a few
months ago.
After only a month's treatment at Sanga Amaj, Rahima was back to
normal. She now works at the centre as a janitor, earning $100 a month.
Many women in the community have sought treatment at the Sanga Amaj
centre.
"They are admitted here for a month - we look after them like a
family; they are eating and living here, and medication is free," says
Dr Toorpaikay Zazi, the head of the centre.
"However, we have been getting too many patients and we don't have
enough space to admit all of them."
According to Dr Zazi, most of these women are pressurised into
addiction by their husbands.
"They do it because their husbands urge them to do it. Others do it
because they can't afford medicine, and there simply aren't any clinics
in the rural areas," she says.
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Sanga Amaj is one of the few women-only clinics in the
country |
'Thirty-year-old Basmina, another patient at the centre, became drawn
to opium after observing her cousin's drug use.
Fearing retribution from her husband, Basmina has been forced to lie
to her family, stating merely that she is sick and undergoing normal
treatment in a Kabul hospital. "My cousin was consuming opium - her
husband was beating her all the time," she says.
"One day I asked her to let me try some, and since then I have been
addicted. Since I have been admitted here, I have started to regain
control of my life."
Rahima is one of hundreds of Afghan women who are addicted to opium,
heroin and hashish, says Mohammad Nasib, managing director of the
Welfare Association for the Development of Afghanistan (Wadan).
The institution runs similar treatment centres in the Afghan
provinces of Ghazni, Paktia, Helmand and Nimruz.
"It's a big social stigma to be a drug addict. Most of our programmes
for female addicts are community-based - we treat them mostly in their
houses."
In Helmand province alone, Wadan's drug treatment centre has 900
patients on the waiting list, some of them female.
"We treat female addicts only at community-based and home-based
settings, emphatically not at residential facilities," says Mr Nasib.
A recent survey conducted by the Sanga Amaj centre suggests there are
hundreds of drug addicts in the local community.
"There are a lot of cases of addiction, but most addicts don't make
it to clinics and centres," says Dr Zazi.
This year Afghanistan's poppy production has hit record highs once
again, a disheartening situation that is predicted to worsen.
Afghan poppy production accounts for more than 90% of the world's
opium trade, and the nation has continued to accumulate addicts within
its own borders - it is estimated that there are 50,000 cases of
addiction in Kabul alone.
Most of these addicts are believed to be refugees who have returned
to Afghanistan from Iran and Pakistan in recent years.
A recent Ministry of Counter Narcotics and UN Office of Drugs and
Crime joint survey said there were 920,000 addicts in Afghanistan, an
estimated 120,000 of whom are women.
Gone are the days when Afghan opium was only hitting the streets of
the UK and mainland Europe - it is now clear that it is also having a
devastating effect on the nation's own citizens. Just before I leave the
centre, Rahima has a final message for Afghan women.
"Being a drug addict is being away from humanity - you don't have the
respect of anyone - you become useless.
"Being a drug addict was my past, not my future," says Rahima with a
smiling face, busy cleaning dishes in the kitchen.
BBC |
