Taliban now waging war on drugs
Addicts encounter heavy-handed tactics as part of treatment
KABUL, Afghanistan — Now the uncontested rulers of Afghanistan, the Taliban have set their sights on stamping out the scourge of narcotics addiction, even if by force.
At nightfall, the battle-hardened fightersturned-policemen scour the capital’s drug-ravaged underworld. Below Kabul’s bustling city bridges, amid piles of garbage and streams of filthy water, hundreds of homeless men addicted to heroin and methamphetamines are rounded up, beaten and forcibly taken to treatment centers. The Associated Press recently gained rare access to one such raid.
The scene provided a window into the new order under Taliban governance: The men — many with mental illness, according to doctors — sat against stone walls with their hands tied. They were told to sober up or face beatings.
The heavy-handed methods are welcomed by some health workers, who have had no choice but to adapt to Taliban rule. “We are not in a democracy anymore, this is a dictatorship. And the use of force is the only way to treat these people,” said Dr. Fazalrabi Mayar, working in a treatment facility. He was referring specifically to Afghans addicted to heroin and meth.
Soon after the Taliban took power Aug. 15, the Taliban Health Ministry issued an order to these facilities, underscoring their intention to strictly control the problem of addiction, doctors said.
Bleary-eyed and skeletal, the detained encompass a spectrum of Afghan lives hollowed out by the country’s tumultuous past of war, invasion and hunger. Afghanistan’s vast poppy fields are the source of the majority of the world’s heroin, and the country has emerged as a significant meth producer. Both have fueled massive addiction around the country.
Old or young, poor or once well-off, the Taliban view the addicts the same: a stain on the society they hope to create. Drug use is against their interpretation of Islamic doctrine. Addicts are also stigmatized by the wider, largely conservative Afghan community.
But the Taliban’s war on drugs is complicated as the country faces the prospect of economic collapse and imminent humanitarian catastrophe.
Sanctions and lack of recognition have made Afghanistan, long an aiddependent country, ineligible
for the financial support from international organizations that accounted for 75% of state spending. An appalling human rights record, especially with respect to women, has rendered the Taliban unpopular among international development organizations.
A liquidity crisis has set in. Public wages are months in arrears and drought has exacerbated food shortages and disease. Winter is weeks away. Without foreign funds, government revenues rely on customs and taxation.
The illicit opium trade is intertwined with Afghanistan’s economy and its turmoil. Poppy growers are part of an important rural constituency for the Taliban, and most rely on the harvest to make ends meet.
During the insurgency years, the Taliban profited from the trade by taxing traffickers, a practice applied on a wide variety of industries in the areas under their control.
Research by David Mansfield,
an expert on the Afghan drug trade, suggests the group made $20 million in 2020, a small fraction compared to other sources of revenue from tax collection. Publicly, it has always denied links to the drug trade.
But the Taliban also implemented the only largely successful ban on opium production, between 2000-2001, before the U.S. invasion. Successive governments have failed to do the same.
Police roundups of addicts did occur during previous administrations. But the Taliban are more forceful and feared.
On a recent evening, fighters raided a drug den under a bridge in Kabul. With cables for whips and slung rifles, they ordered the group of men out of their fetid quarters. Some came staggering out, others were forced to the ground. The sudden clinking of lighters followed another order to hand over belongings; the
men preferred to use up all the drugs they possessed before they were confiscated.
In the end, at least 150 men were rounded up. They were taken to the district police station, where all their belongings — drugs, wallets, knifes, rings, lighters, a juice box — were burned since they are forbidden to take them to the treatment center.
By midnight, they were taken to the Avicenna Medical Hospital for Drug Treatment, on the edges of Kabul. Once a military base, Camp Phoenix, established by the U.S. army in 2003, it was made into a drug treatment center in 2016. Now it’s Kabul’s largest, capable of accommodating 1,000 people.
The men are stripped and bathed. Their heads are shaved.
Here, a 45-day treatment program begins, said Dr. Wahedullah Koshan, the head psychiatrist.
They will undergo withdrawal with only some medical care to alleviate discomfort and pain. Koshan conceded the hospital lacks the alternative opioids, buprenorphine and methadone, typically used to treat heroin addiction. His staff have not been paid since July, but he said the Health Ministry promised salaries would be forthcoming.
The Taliban have broader aims.
“This is just the beginning, later we will go after the farmers, and we will punish them according to (Islamic) Shariah law,” said lead patrol officer Qari Ghafoor. But any meaningful ban will require negotiations with farmers.
Mohammed Kabir, a 30-year-old poppy farmer from Uruzgan province, checked himself into the hospital two weeks ago. He said demand from traffickers remains high, and come harvest time in November, selling opium is his only means to make a living.