Editor in Chief: Moh. Reza Huwaida Thursday, March 28th, 2024

Source of Gradual Deaths

Afghan people not only are getting killed in terrorist attacks and suicide bombings carried out by Taliban and other insurgent groups but are also suffering from many other evils. While Afghan children and women get killed or become deprived of the presence of their fathers and husbands at the dinner table almost on a daily basis, one can easily see the gradual deaths of drug addicts under and around the bridges along the Kabul River as well as in streets.

The number of this population is increasing day by day because of poor economic conditions and lack of employment opportunities in the country. But the government and politicians have become stone-hearted and instead of thinking for a way out of these disasters and tragedies, they are involved in political games, plunging the country deeper into the economic and political crises.

As terrorists shed Afghan blood, opium and drugs also suck Afghan blood. Afghanistan is now among 22 major drug transit or illicit drug-producing countries and it continues to remain the world's largest producer of opium.

On Thursday, September 15, the US president Barack Obama said, "Afghanistan remains the world's largest producer of opium poppy and a major source of heroin."

In a presidential determination, he said "Helmand province remains the largest grower of opium in Afghanistan, but the provincial government's innovative Food Zone program, which provides farmers with wheat seed and fertilizer in exchange for a pledge not to grow poppy, coupled with credible law enforcement, has reduced poppy cultivation by a third, to 69,883 hectares in 2009 and even further to 65,043 hectares in 2010."

Bahamas, Belize, Bolivia, Burma, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Jamaica, Laos, Mexico, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Panama, Peru and Venezuela also figure in the presidential determination.

Unfortunately, over the last ten years, the counter-narcotic programs have not been successful in eliminating poppy cultivation and it continues to remain a source of heroin to lead Afghan people to gradual deaths and turn them into useless human consumers.

This happens while the government is plagued with corruption which runs rampant across the government agencies and is wasting the opportunities to generate for Afghan youths to prevent them from becoming drug addicts or running into the trouble of gradual deaths.