Afghanistan: Roughed up from the streets into the Taliban’s drug treatment facility
“When I felt a hand grab me from behind, I was trying to sneak drugs beneath the bridge.” They were the Taliban. “They were here to remove us.”
Mohammed Omar recalls the unannounced arrival of Taliban soldiers at the western Kabul bridge known as “Pul-e-Sukhta.”
The region was a notorious drug addict hangout for a long time before the Taliban took back power in August 2021.
They have been gathering hundreds of men from the bridge, parks, and hilltops all throughout the city in recent months. The majority have been transported to a former American military installation that has been transformed into a temporary rehabilitation facility.
Afghanistan is the world’s epicentre of drug addiction. “The Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement” estimates that 3.5 million persons in a nation of around 40 million people are addicted.
Many males, slumped over piles of trash, syringes, faeces, and occasionally the bodies of overdose victims, can frequently be seen squatting beneath the Pul-e-Sukhta bridge.
Heroin or methamphetamine are the preferred drugs.
Dogs are rummaging through piles of trash beneath the bridge, emitting an offensive odour while looking for food scraps. Above, commuters scramble to board buses at the nearby depot as traffic flows and street sellers peddle their wares.
Despite the previous administration’s approach of gathering up addicts and housing them in centres, the guys who called this site home were largely ignored. But when the Taliban regained power in the nation, they began a more active campaign to drive them off the streets.
Omar was transferred to a rehabilitation facility that has 1,000 beds and 3,000 patients right now. The situation is filthy. Before being freed, the guys are kept in the centre for about 45 days and put through a rigorous regimen.
There is no guarantee that these patients won’t experience a relapse.
Most of the people taken off the streets are men, but some women and kids have also been sent to special rehabilitation facilities.
Like the other addicts in the Kabul treatment facility, Omar is severely underweight, with a haggard face and a brown garment issued by the authorities that is loosely hanging off of him.
This is a simple procedure for the centre’s doctors. The crew is having trouble accommodating the growing number of people being delivered by the Taliban.
The doctors are steadfast in their commitment to doing whatever they can to assist these addicts, despite the crowding and lack of resources.
“There is no guarantee that once they leave, these people won’t experience a relapse.” Yet we must persevere, and more importantly, we must instil in them a sense of future optimism. “There isn’t any at the moment.”
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