When opium is the only pain relief available to the poor of Badakhshan
By Shahab Ariaiy*
Women in Qamargul’s remote village warned her against using opium for her pregnancy-related back pain. But with no health centre near her difficult-to-access home, the 22-year-old felt she had no choice but to use opium to dull her pain.
The mud house in which Qamargul* lives with her husband and their only child is so poorly built that they sleep in the kitchen for warmth during the winter. In addition, they can’t afford to buy enough wood to heat the rest of their home. Once Qamargul began taking opium, she found it hard to stop. She isn’t alone. Others in her district have discovered that opium can be a more effective pain reliever than prescription drugs but don’t realize the effects of addiction, which can be impossible to escape.
“Thirty-five to 40 percent of women in the border districts, especially in Shighnan, Wakhan, Khowahan, and Zibak are using opium in some way, and most of them have become addicted due to continuous use,” explains a public health department source in Badakhshan Province. Now, Qamargul says she finds it too difficult to do her household chores without using opium. Her husband, who is a daily wage laborer, buys opium with his income but sometimes finds no work, which means no opium for his wife. When he returns empty-handed, she has gone to the homes of other addicted residents, pleading for the drug.
“When I find opium, my pains calm down, but without it, I become like a lifeless body,” Qamargul says anxiously. She doesn’t want her children, including her unborn baby to become addicts like her, yet she knows it may be too late: “This substance harms me and the child I carry in my womb. When my baby comes into the world, he will become addicted, and my today’s condition will be his tomorrow.”
People in remote areas of Afghanistan have long used opium. For decades, they were deprived of the most basic necessities of life, such as markets, roads, schools, and health centres. As a result, they used to travel on foot for weeks to reach a provincial centre large enough to contain needed services.
People in many districts of Badakhshan, especially in Shighnan, Zibak, Ishkashim, Wakhan, Khowahan, Yamgan, Kiran, Munjan, Nusay, Shekay, and Kuf-Ab, use opium to treat ailments such as back pain, headaches, coughs, cold, and insomnia.
A lack of proper narcotics can be equally fatal: People in the border districts of Badakhshan remember times when family members died due to the lack of proper drugs and medicine.
Today, the widespread use of opium means that many impoverished families contain addicts. In particular, women have particularly suffered after nearly a half century of war. Across from Qamargul’s home is a ruined building. “In this ruin lives an addicted family who wanted to sell one of their children a few months ago,” a guide tells Zan Times. In its courtyard sits a woman next to a fire, which she’s using to cook food for her children. She introduces herself as Homaira* and says she is 31 years old. “When I got married, because of the pains I had during pregnancy, everyone told me to use opium to get better,” she explains. “Now, my husband and children are using it, too.”
She started using opium after her marriage. “Every time I got sick, I had to use it,” she says. Now, Homaira is so addicted that she needs opium to get up each day. “Without opium, I don’t have the strength or patience to work,” says the mother of three. Even more painful for her is the addiction of her children. Unaware of the drug’s devastating consequences, the children sit beside their parents and inhale the smoke from the burning opium. They even consume a small amount to fall asleep. “We are very regretful now, and we wish we had never become addicted to these substances,” says Homaira. “Since the start of our addiction, life has become meaningless for us, and we have never seen any prosperity or pleasure.”
While there are no recent data on the number of female addicts in the province, Sayeda Saadi, who headed the awareness department at the Anti-Narcotics Directorate of Badakhshan in the previous government, says, “A survey from 2012 by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime indicates that Badakhshan had 26,000 addicts to various narcotics, of which 4,000 are women.” Those 11-year-old statistics point to a continued problem with addiction, as experts think that there could now be as many as 10,000 female addicts, many of whom started using opium and other narcotics because they are more accessible than medicine.
Another victim of addiction is 27-year-old Gulnasa*. Like her fellow villagers, she uses opium as a painkiller and even treats her children’s coughs and colds with opium. Once, she had hoped to study medicine at college. Today, poverty and rural life have left her so frail that she can hardly care for her family.
When Farzana* was a child, her parents began using opium. Unaware of its dangerous properties, she started using the drug when she was 10, became addicted after her parents died, and hadn’t stopped since. Her brothers are also addicts. Now she’s 40 years old with signs of physical abuse visible on her face. “Whenever my brothers couldn’t find opium, they beat and torture me. Today, one of my kidneys has failed,” she explains, adding regretfully, “I wish that both I and my children could be treated.”
According to the district elders who talked with Zan Times, more deaths occur when opium is cheap because the poor in the region can afford to buy more opium and excessive use of opium reduces the human lifespan and paralyzes the immune system faster. However, after regaining power, the Taliban imposed restrictions on the production and sale of opium. In the last two years, the price of opium has skyrocketed in the past two years. A kilogram that used to sell for 800 to 1,000 afghani in 2021 now fetches 12,000 to 15,000 afghani in the province’s markets. Those higher prices mean that addicts are finding it hard to find the money to buy even a few grams of opium, and that lack of drugs has contributed to their pain of addictino. (In addition, though opium sales continue in many markets in Badakhshan, sometimes at the behest of Taliban commanders, its use is still a crime in many Ismaili-majority districts.)
Zakia, a 29-year-old mother of three, tells Zan Times that she turned to using opium four years ago after suffering from chronic back pain. After consulting several doctors and taking medications that failed to improve her health, she started using opium. Paying rent, covering living expenses, and buying opium has left Zakia and her husband, who works in a bakery in Faizabad, financially strained. “A significant portion of my monthly income, 9,000 Afghanis, goes to buying opium for my wife,” he explains.
Three years ago, Zakia and her family moved from their remote village to Faizabad. Though there’s a provincial hospital in the city, a lack of financial support from the Taliban means it can’t offer adequate services, including medicine and equipment. As a result, hundreds of patients who visit the hospital each day are forced to purchase needed medicines from private pharmacies. But deepening financial problems mean many families, such as Zakia’s, opt to treat their loved ones with opium.
So, in addition to struggling with poverty and addiction, their children are being mistreated in school. According to Zakia, students taunt her eight-year-old son because he has become addicted. He is in the second grade.
*Names have been changed to protect the identity of the interviewees and writer. Shahab Ariayi is the pseudonym of a journalist in Afghanistan.
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