The multi-headed hydra that is the Afghanistan drug trade
Since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, every party to the conflict has claimed a stake in the narcotics industry.
15th July 2018
HERAT, AFGHANISTAN — Hamid Amiri was only 11 years old when he took his first puff of hashish.
His friends — a mixture of fellow Afghan refugees and young Iranian boys — had offered him a hand-rolled hashish cigarette as they stood around a stream in the northeastern Iranian city of Mashhad, where Amiri’s family had been living as refugees.
At the time, Amiri felt a calm come over him as he stared out into the waters they swam in each afternoon. As the years passed though, he would find himself suffocating under the tidal wave of an insatiable craving. The next 21 years of his life, including 10 more as a refugee in Iran, disappeared under a drugged out haze.
Soon, hashish wasn’t enough, and he quickly moved from drug to drug. First it was opium, then he discovered the rush from a hit of heroin, and finally the surges of happiness and energy that came with crystal methamphetamine.
By the time he returned to his native Afghanistan in 2009, he was a full blown addict.
LIKE THOUSANDS OF OTHER AFGHANS, HAMID AMIRI WAS FIRST EXPOSED TO DRUGS WHILE LIVING WITH HIS FAMILY AS A REFUGEE IN IRAN. (CREDIT: ALI M. LATIFI FOR THINKPROGRESS)
As Amiri’s own addiction grew, so did the country’s. In 2009, the United Nations estimated that one in 12 Afghans was suffering from narcotics addiction, double the amount from a 2005 survey. By 2018, that number would soar to 3.6 million, nearly 11.1 percent of the population, with drug use in rural areas being three times higher than in urban centers. The World Health Organization estimates that the prevalence of intravenous drug use has led to 4.4 percent of those intravenous drug users contracting HIV.
Since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001, the Afghan drug trade has evolved into a multi-headed hydra that has seen everyone from the Taliban to regional neighbors and government-allied militias and security officials claiming a stake in the narcotics industry, which the United Nations estimates is valued at nearly $7 billion annually, or up to 32 percent of the country’s GDP.
The societal uncertainties caused by the decades-long conflict has led to increasing social divides along glaring economic lines, a reality that, some say, has only further fueled the massive addiction rates in the nation.
“We have a huge gap between a rich minority who enjoy many privileges and a majority who are deprived of basic services and dignities. So, the youth who can’t accept poverty and can’t afford to be run in those circles of the wealthy and powerful fall prey to addiction,” said Orzala Nemat, director of the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit, a Kabul-based think tank that has done extensive research on the issue of drugs.
“The youth who can’t accept poverty and can’t afford to be run in those circles of the wealthy and powerful fall prey to addiction.”
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