article: Afghanistan's child opium addicts

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Afghanistan's child opium addicts

By Zeina Khodr in Badakshan

 
Afghanistan remains infamous as an exporter of opium. However, opium use within the country is just as rampant, with perhaps one million addicts in the country, according to the UN, of whom more than 600,000 are under the age of 15.

Al Jazeera's Zeina Khodr travelled to the mainly rural province of Badakshan in northeastern Afghanistan, where children under five years old are routinely given opium by their mothers.

Three-year-old Said is an opium addict. Without it, he becomes restless. His mother Zarbibi shares her child's condition. She herself is a user and has been one for the past four years.

Zarbibi routinely blows opium into Said's face to keep him quiet. It is the only way she knows how to free herself so that she can work.

She said: "Whenever I have chores or work at home, I give my son opium so he would stay calm.

"I also give him opium so he can sleep. When I realised he became an addict, I regretted it."

(full article)

A sad reality in Afghanistan... has been that way for like, ever.

I read somewhere we were trying to work with the government of Afghanistan to try to get farmers to grow something else instead... but it's a hard sell.

Burn the poppy fields and execute all of the drug growing fiends.

Article I just found from the good old days of May 2001:

But last July, the Taliban’s leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, issued an extraordinary edict. It banned poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, calling drug production un-Islamic. Few in international law enforcement took Omar’s edict seriously — until now.

Earlier this month, an international delegation led by the United Nations Drug Control Program — which included two U.S. government narcotics experts —visited Afghanistan to study the impact of Omar’s ban.

Delegates told MSNBC.com that during the 10-day visit they found no evidence of poppy crops anywhere in the survey area, which concentrated on the biggest poppy-growing region of Afghanistan.

“There are no poppies,” said Bernard Frahi, the head of the U.N. program’s Afghanistan project. “It’s amazing.”

That in less than a year Afghanistan has gone from being the biggest opium producer in the world to providing a trickle of the global supply may be the single-most successful drug moratorium in modern history .... The international community has shunned Afghanistan’s Islamic rulers over their human rights violations and their harboring of Osama bin Laden, the Saudi exile Washington blames for masterminding bombing attacks on U.S. interests. It also has remained silent about Afghanistan’s drug ban, outraging the Taliban.

Afghanistan’s ambassador at large, Rehmatullah Aga, told MSNBC.com that the failure of the West to praise the poppy ban in any way has made Afghanistan’s leaders more suspicious of the overall intentions of the international community.

But the United States, which has preached its anti-drug message around the globe and praised the eradication efforts of other countries, may break the silence soon.

The U.N. poppy report, to be issued at the end of May, will conclude that “the ban was very effective,” says James Callahan of the State Department’s Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.

“I would be surprised if there were more than a few (acres) of poppies in Taliban-controlled areas this year,” Callahan, a member of the delegation that visited Afghanistan, told MSNBC.com in an interview. “We hope to both increase U.S. assistance and to try to rally international opinion and other donors to increase humanitarian assistance to these farmers.”

(full article)