American troops are finally leaving Afghanistan, good news for the war on terror but deep in the Afghan mountains a different kind of war persists, the war against drugs. Afghanistan produces 90% of the world’s opium and most of it synthesized to heroin for trafficking. The large poppy fields are under the control of the Taliban who export it to bankroll their terrorist activities and the rest processed locally to imbibe locals in heroin. The war on terror should include the war on drugs and liberation of the people of Afghanistan should include liberation from drugs. Statistics indicate an estimated 25% of the population is addicted to heroin that may not be an immediate concern of the US government but leaving a people incapacitated by drugs is rather callous. On the streets of Kabul, scenes of unconscious men and women lying on the roadside is common. The self-induced comatose is caused by the heroin administered intravenously that subsequently shutdowns the body in-order to process the toxins. Fellow addicts would be spotted carrying colleagues in stupor a shade then inject themselves, the practice iterates until the last man standing who will lay with a needle stuck in his arm.
War does not determine who is right but who is left, Bertrand Russell wrote in his memoirs. The people left in the Afghan war are disillusioned, frustrated, with no work and desperate drugs are their only remedy. Rebuilding Afghanistan is not only on the infrastructure it include the people, as part of the United States government program for reconstructing Afghanistan rehabilitation and curbing drug trafficking should be on top of their agenda. Pundits indicate there has been an upsurge in opium production in Afghanistan since the occupation of the US, much more than during the Taliban rule. One way or another it is a US problem since a quarter of the earnings go to warlords who use it to buy weapons and the relative peace created by the US army has actually encourage the cultivation of opium. More land is now used in poppy plantation in Afghanistan than for coca cultivation in Latin America.
