Afghanistan COI Repository

EU and WHO, EU contributes €16 million to improve mental health and drug use disorder services in Afghanistan, 15 December 2022

“14 December 2022, Kabul, Afghanistan – The European Union has allocated €16 million towards increasing access of vulnerable populations in Afghanistan to mental health and drug use disorder services. Drug use is usually associated with increased vulnerabilities in many areas of life, resulting in negative social and health consequences, such as co-occurring mental and physical disorders, drug-related deaths, unemployment, stigmatization, crime, and violence. To address drug use and its related disorders in Afghanistan, World Health Organization (WHO) will increase Afghans’ access to integrated, qualitative, and comprehensive drug use disorder and mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) services. “Drug use disorders need to be considered primarily as health problems rather than criminal behaviours. The EU funding will enable us to provide an effective and integrated drug treatment programme that focuses on the physical, mental, social, psychological, and economic well-being of vulnerable populations,” says Dr Luo Dapeng, WHO Representative in Afghanistan. Raffaella Iodice, EU Chargée d’Affaires a.i. and Deputy Head of Delegation to Afghanistan: “The EU remains deeply committed to supporting the Afghan people. Too many persons in Afghanistan suffer from mental health disorders after years of conflict and political changes. Improving the health and well-being of the people of Afghanistan jointly with WHO and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime is to address immediate needs of people and represents concrete steps towards achieving universal health coverage”. The EU’s assistance to Afghanistan addresses notably the most vulnerable segments of the population, including women, girls, minorities, internally displaced persons and refugees. EU aid is channelled through United Nations agencies or nongovernmental organizations.”

ToloNews, Drug Addicts Describe Difficult Life in Herat, 10 July 2022

Dozens of drug addicts are living in open areas under the sun in the western province of Herat.

[…]

The drug addicts said that they are suffering from other diseases but there is no one consider their situation. “There are no jobs. I got addicted to it due to lack of work. We don’t have any place and we lay down here,” said Mohamad Riza, a drug addict.

The provincial health officials said that around 1,500 drug addicts have been collected from the streets in nearly one last year.

“Around 1,200 drug addicts have been either sent to their provinces or handed over to their families in Herat city

or districts after they were treated,” said Sayed Mohammad Sadat, a health official. […]

Based on available numbers, more than 70,000 of people are addicted to drugs, of whom women and children are

%13.

Gandhara, Scared Straight: Taliban Treats Drug Addicts With A Heavy Dose Of Prison, 4 April 2022

“One of the Taliban's first moves upon seizing power in Afghanistan was to take extreme measures to tackle the country's drug epidemic. To that end, thousands of addicts have been rounded up, beaten, and marched off to prison, where they have been forced to go cold turkey among hardened criminals for months. Dawood, who was rounded up along with hundreds of other addicts in the southwestern province of Farah, says the harsh methods employed by the prison were ineffective. Within weeks of his release two months ago, he was using again. "I have been suffering from this disease for 10 years. I was sent to prison by the Taliban's government, but the treatment didn't work," he told RFE/RL's Radio Azadi. "I want to go to a rehabilitation center, because they provide better treatment."Afghanistan is home to an estimated 3.5 million addicts, a number that accounts for nearly 10 percent of the population. While there were some 100 drug-treatment centers operating in the country before the hard- line Islamist group returned to power in August, many that depended on foreign funding are closed or struggling to remain open. Government facilities, meanwhile, are overwhelmed with the new forced arrivals. The leading drugs of choice in Afghanistan are opioids that derive from the opium poppy that flourishes in the country despite years of eradication efforts and attempts to sow alternative crops. But aside from heroin and morphine, an increasing

number of Afghans are now hooked on crystal meth, which drug traders have learned to produce from ephedra plants that grow wild in the central highlands. [...] Today, Afghanistan is well-entrenched as the world's leading producer of opium, generating up to $2.7 billion in income in 2021. [...] In his first press conference in August, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid vowed that the group would again ban opium poppy cultivation and trafficking. Months later Mujahid backtracked, saying a ban would deny Afghans a major source of income.

However, on April 3, Mujahid announced a new decree by Taliban Supreme Leader Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada that banned opium-poppy cultivation and drug manufacturing. The decree also ordered the destruction of opium crops and prohibited the trade and transport of a range of drugs. [...]”

Deutsche Welle (Afghanistan), Heroin use in Kabul grows under Taliban, say locals, 10 February 2022

“The Pul-e-Sukhta bridge in Kabul is synonymous with hard drug use. After many NGOs and charities fled

Afghanistan, drug addicts have been largely left on their own. And the number of users is swelling, residents say.”

Ariana News, IEA turns Kandahar Prison into treatment center for drug addicts, 25 December 2021

“Kandahar Central Prison is home to around 800 drug addicts, along with 1,000 inmates.”

BBC, ‘It’s like hell in here’: The struggle to save Afghanistan's starving babies, 2 December 2021

“(...) another hospital specialising in treating drug addicts is also struggling to adequately care for its patients, whose withdrawal from heroin, opium and crystal meth can no longer be supported with medication.

"There are patients who have to be tied to the bed with chains, or there are patients who need to be handcuffed because they experience severe attacks. It's very difficult for us to take care of them," says Dr Nowruz, the hospital's director, adding that - without proper care - "our hospital is exactly the same as jail for them".

But this hospital too is on the brink of closing in the face of dwindling staff, and if it does shut, Dr Nowruz worries what will become of his patients in the brutal winter ahead.

"There is no shelter for them. They normally go and live in places like under bridges, in ruins, in graveyards, in a situation which is unbearable for a human," he says.

Al Jazeera, Now in power, Taliban sets sights on Afghan drug underworld, 11 October 2021

“Now the uncontested rulers of Afghanistan, the Taliban has set its sights on stamping out the scourge of narcotics addiction, even if by force.

At nightfall, the battle-hardened fighters-turned-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 centres.

The Associated Press gained rare access to one such raid last week.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.””