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State Department Comment on House Foreign Affairs Committee Afghanistan Review

September 10, 2024 ,

U.S. Department of State

OFFICE OF THE SPOKESPERSON

SEPTEMBER 9, 2024

The Department appreciates the Committee’s longstanding interest in Afghanistan policy, and we strongly believe in Congress’s independent role in shaping U.S. foreign policy. We remain committed to working with Congress on its oversight requests and advancing the interests of the American people.

Since 2021, we have expended thousands of hours fulfilling congressional requests for documents, briefings, and interviews related to Afghanistan. The Department has provided approximately 20,000 pages of documents to Congress, conducted nine high-level briefings for committees and members of the House of Representatives and Senate, and made available or engaged 15 senior officials for transcribed interviews to House Foreign Affairs Committee staff and members. This includes the Department taking the unprecedented step of providing Congress with a highly-sensitive cable and internal memos related to the Department’s After-Action Review.

Additionally, Secretary Blinken has testified before House and Senate Committees 14 times on Afghanistan, including four times directly before the House Foreign Affairs Committee. It was critical to have done so. Americans deserved to hear directly from their leaders on the decisions made to end America’s longest war and the steps taken to fulfill our commitment to the thousands of brave Afghans who stood side-by-side with the United States over the course of two decades.

As the House Foreign Affairs Committee Majority and Minority members complete their review of the 2021 withdrawal from Kabul, the Department wants to especially recognize the dedicated State and Department of Defense professionals who showed extraordinary courage and tenacity as they worked tirelessly on the ground in Afghanistan, in Washington, and at other sites, alongside other critical U.S. Government and civil society partners, to evacuate and assist as many people as possible in the closing days of our presence in Kabul. Our people remain our greatest asset.

We also share our abiding respect and reverence for the 13 servicemembers whose lives were taken by ISIS-K during the withdrawal. These heroes embodied the very best of who we are as a nation and we owe them an immense debt we can never repay. Their selfless sacrifice in the line of duty saved thousands of lives. Our deepest sympathies are with the Gold Star families they left behind.

**

Ending America’s longest war was never going to be easy. But President Biden pledged to do so, and within months of taking office, he made the difficult but necessary decision to end America’s 20 years of war in Afghanistan. He inherited an agreement his predecessor had reached with the Taliban to remove all remaining U.S. forces from Afghanistan by May 1, 2021. As part of that agreement, the previous Administration compelled the Afghan Government to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners, including several top war commanders helping the Taliban achieve their strongest position in 20 years. Meanwhile, the agreement reduced our force presence to 2,500 troops.[1]   And while the Taliban had agreed to cease attacks on our troops, it was contingent that all were withdrawn by the May 31 deadline.

It was, and remains, a flawed agreement that hampered efforts to end the war through negotiations among Afghans. As General McKenzie, the CENTCOM Commander who served both the current and past administration, testified: “The signing of the Doha agreement had a really pernicious effect on the government of Afghanistan and on its military…”[2] 

Due to this agreement, when the Biden Administration entered office it found a revitalized and emboldened Taliban, along with a decimated SIV program and a complete lack of planning for a withdrawal.

The President acted in the best interests of the American people when he decided to bring our troops home and end America’s longest war. This decision ensured another generation of Americans would not have to fight and die in Afghanistan — a full decade after Osama bin Laden had been brought to justice. It strengthened our national security by better positioning us to confront the challenges of the future and put the United States in a stronger place to lead the world.  It freed up critical military, intelligence, diplomatic, and other resources to ensure we are better poised to respond to today’s threats to international peace and stability – whether that be Russia’s brutal and unprovoked assault on Ukraine, China’s increasingly assertive moves in the Indo-Pacific and around the world, or a persistent and global terrorist threat.

**

In the three years since the end of our country’s longest war, important questions have been asked about what could have been done differently. The Department has made every effort to answer these questions transparently – whether they be from Congress, members of the media, the American public, or our own workforce.

As the Department has undertaken this effort, regrettably, others have sought to advance their own interests or agendas that have almost nothing to do with learning important lessons to strengthen American national security. Even more unfortunately, misinformation about the Department’s role and efforts have sought to tarnish the reputation of dedicated non-partisan professionals, many of whom tirelessly worked on Afghanistan policy for years.

The Department has a deep respect for Congress’ legislative mandate and responsibility, and as stated above, cooperated extensively with the Congress to provide the information necessary to do that important work. This is why it remains frustrating that time and time again, Majority members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, along with their Republican counterparts in the House, issued partisan statements, cherry-picked facts, withheld testimonies from the American people, and obfuscated the truth behind conjecture.

Their so-called midterm report on Afghanistan in 2022 did a deep disservice to the American people by further politicizing U.S. policy towards Afghanistan instead of focusing on bipartisan solutions. There is little reason to believe the final report will be anything different than the conclusion of a blatantly partisan exercise.

**

One of the most persistent misunderstandings of the leadup to the withdrawal was that the State Department lacked a strategy, specifically a “Noncombatant Evacuation Operations” plan to close operations in Afghanistan. This is not accurate.[3] 

Noncombatant evacuation operations – often called NEOs – are partnerships between the Department, the U.S. military, and the host government to “assist the Department of State (DOS) in evacuating noncombatants, nonessential military personnel, selected host-nation citizens, and third country nationals whose lives are in danger from locations in a host foreign nation to an appropriate safe haven and/or the United States,” as described by the United States Military Joint Publication.  The planning for a NEO originates within the State Department before the President approves the action to bring in the military to assist in any needed evacuations. It is a whole-of-government action — planned and decided through a National Security Council process — and statements or suggestions that the Department has the sole authority to activate a NEO are inaccurate.

State Department officials who spoke with the House Foreign Affairs Committee explained during their hours-long interviews that there was extensive planning by the State Department for a possible diplomatic exit from Afghanistan. Planning began in April 2021, with multiple inter-agency and embassy exercises, using a range of scenarios.  The inter-agency developed detailed indicators and warnings to inform a decision to declare a NEO — including the encirclement or siege of Kabul, the closure of HKIA, resumed attacks on American forces, and a declared or demonstrated Taliban intent to take Kabul.

As Brian McKeon, the Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources during the Afghanistan withdrawal and evacuation, described, there was continued development of a NEO between the State Department, the Department of Defense, and CENTCOM – with the latter traveling to Kabul in July of 2021 to “further refine the NEO planning.”[4] 

Additionally, the U.S. government intended for the U.S. Embassy to remain open after the end of the war — a decision Congress broadly supported. So, while U.S. military forces would end combat operations, Department personnel planned to operate out of Embassy Kabul to assist Americans and Afghan allies, coordinate diplomatic and development activity and investments, and help protect and advance U.S. national security interests after August 2021. Given those expectations, along with the continued operation of commercial flights out of Kabul until August 15, executing the NEO before that date would have signaled to the people of Afghanistan the U.S. had lost all confidence in the then-Afghan government and precipitated the very collapse we sought to avoid.

The government of Afghanistan controlled all 34 Provincial Capitals until August 6. Between August 6 and the 14, they began to fall rapidly, crossing the indicator and warning trip wires established by the inter-agency. On August 14, State initiated the NEO through an inter-agency agreement. On August 15, President Ghani abandoned his office and fled the country, and the Afghanistan Republic security services and government collapsed. The Taliban then entered Kabul.

Again, while the State Department formally triggers a NEO, the decision to do so is a collective, inter-agency one, coordinated by a National Security Council process that includes multiple Principal and Deputies Committee meetings.  Statements or suggestions that the Department has the sole authority to activate a NEO are false – moreover, principal-level discussions did not conclude a NEO should be initiated prior to the collective interagency decision that was reached on August 14.

Executing a NEO requires substantial military and diplomatic resources, so the State Department, alongside our military colleagues, quickly adapted to the situation on the ground.

Throughout the crisis, there was intense coordination between military and Department personnel. As former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan John Bass described, there was engagement “on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis in terms of the operational coordination of aspects of the NEO” engagement with “the senior military commanders regularly.”[5] 

A NEO is but one tool in the diplomatic toolbox, and one of last resort. And NEO planning was far from the only preparation State took in the weeks and months leading up to August 2021.[6] 

In March, the Department began urging Americans living in Afghanistan to leave the country. At the end of April, the State Department placed Embassy Kabul on ordered departure status.[7]  That same month, State senior leaders and officials traveled to the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan alongside Department of Defense personnel to prepare for the forthcoming absence of the United States military in the region.[8]  In total, between March and August, the Department sent 19 unique messages with warnings to Americans living in Afghanistan to leave, as well as offers of help, including financial assistance to pay for plane tickets.[9]

Despite these efforts, when Kabul fell, approximately 6,000 American citizens remained in Afghanistan — almost all dual nationals who had been living in Afghanistan for years or decades. Almost all were evacuated by August 31 thanks to a relentless effort by the State Department to identify them, contact them, and help bring them to the airport.  This effort included more than 55,000 phone calls and 33,000 emails in a two-week period.  It was unprecedented in scope and scale.

On August 31, several hundred American citizens remained in Afghanistan who could not or would not leave because they could not reach the airport, did not want to leave extended family members behind, or simply chose to remain.  Secretary Blinken vowed to facilitate the departure of any remaining Americans. “We’re continuing our relentless efforts to help any remaining Americans… leave Afghanistan if they so choose,”[10] the Secretary said publicly. Between September 1 and the end of 2021, the State Department made good on that pledge, facilitating the departure of nearly 500 American citizens.

In February of 2021, the President took a crucial step to ensure America lived up to its enduring commitment to the individuals who stood side-by-side with us in Afghanistan by issuing an executive order directing a review to improve the Afghan Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program, which was undertaken with great care. Domestic resettlement agencies have traditionally welcomed Afghan SIVs to the United States, but these critical partners had been deliberately left in shambles by the previous Administration and needed massive investments to be reinvigorated.[11] 

As the White House’s summary of Pentagon reviews of U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan details: “The Department of State began seeking transit agreements for Afghans with third countries in June, secured agreements with Qatar and Kuwait in July, and negotiated arrangements with other countries including Germany, Italy, Spain, UAE, Bahrain, Kosovo, and Albania. Setting up this network of transit sites— “lily pads”—would not have been possible without the support of international partners across the Middle East and Europe.”[12] 

In late July, the State Department, along with the Department of Defense and interagency partners, initiated Operation Allies Refuge to begin evacuating SIV applicants in the final stages of processing.[13]  U.S. diplomatic missions in the Middle East and Europe worked successfully and quickly with host government and Department of Defense personnel to establish temporary housing for tens of thousands of evacuees. During the U.S.-facilitated evacuation, vulnerable Afghans went to overseas Defense Department facilities for security screening, vetting, and the administration of public health vaccinations.[14]  Afghan evacuees were then transported by air to eight Department of Defense domestic safe-havens. More than 10,000 State, Defense, and Homeland Security personnel supported this unprecedented humanitarian effort alongside other U.S. Government partners and a cross-section of America.[15] 

Throughout the first half of 2021, the Administration was constantly assessing the likelihood of President Ashraf Ghani’s government’s staying in power and considered multiple scenarios.  Even the most pessimistic assessments did not predict the government forces in Kabul would collapse while U.S. forces remained.  As General Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has previously said, “Nothing I or anyone else saw indicated a collapse of this army and this government in 11 days.”[16]  In an August 14 2021, phone call to Secretary Blinken, President Ghani expressed his intent “to fight to the death” to stave off the Taliban takeover before subsequently fleeing the next day.[17] 

Nonetheless, we planned and exercised a wide range of contingencies.  Because of that planning, we were able to draw down our embassy and move remaining personnel to the airport within 48 hours and the military, which had  pre-positioned in the region, was able to secure the airport and start the evacuation within 72 hours.[18]

The U.S. Government achieved the largest airlift in U.S. history with approximately 120,000 Americans, Afghans, and third-country nationals departing Afghanistan in those final two weeks of August 2021.[19]

Throughout this process, the Department relied heavily on the expertise and guidance of those on the ground and across the globe to assess the fluid environment in Afghanistan. Secretary Blinken has spoken publicly of his respect and appreciation for the selfless work of all these individuals, who stepped up to help others in their time of need, and his commitment to hearing from any State Department employee who wanted to share their Afghanistan-related insights.

Much attention has been paid to the State Department’s highly-valued dissent cable – a way for State Department employees at all levels to directly reach a Secretary of State with dissenting views on U.S. foreign policy. As Secretary Blinken previously stated in public testimony before Congress, the cable did not suggest the Afghan government and security forces were going to collapse prior to our departure. As the Secretary also said publicly, the Department agreed with the concerns raised in the cable, and in fact, a number of the recommendations the cable made were already in motion before it was received. Still, the opinions expressed in the dissent cable were heard at the senior-most levels of State Department leadership. The Secretary personally read and oversaw a response to the dissent cable, and its contents were factored into his thinking.

“With regard to the so-called dissent channel cable, it’s something I’m immensely proud of. It’s a tradition that we have and you’re right, I read every such cable, I respond to it, I factor into it my own thinking and actions, and that cable did not predict the collapse of the government or security forces before our departure. It was very focused and rightly focused on the work we were doing to try to get Afghans at risk out of the country and pressing to speed up that effort,” the Secretary told the Congress.[20] 

The continued distortion of the dissent cable – which remains classified – by Members of Congress to further a political talking point is deeply disappointing, especially after the Department went to extraordinary lengths to allow members of the Foreign Affairs Committee the ability to review the document — the first time since the inception of the dissent channel during the Vietnam War this access had been granted.

**

The State Department remains committed to the thousands of brave Afghans who stood side-by-side with the United States over the course of the past two decades.  As Secretary Blinken has said: our commitment to these individuals is enduring.

When President Biden took office, the State Department inherited an SIV program with a 14-step process based on a statutory framework enacted by Congress involving multiple agencies – and a backlog of more than 17,000 SIV applicants.  There had not been a single SIV applicant interview in Kabul in nine months, going back to March 2020.[21]  The program was basically in a stall as the previous Administration made no senior-level or interagency effort to address the SIV backlog or consider relocation and resettlement options for our Afghan allies and their families as they worked to negotiate a military withdrawal.

Within two weeks of taking office, State re-started the SIV interview process in Kabul.  On February 4, one of President Biden’s first executive orders directed the State to immediately review the program to identify causes of undue delay and find ways to process SIV applications more rapidly. Starting in the Spring, Secretary Blinken surged resources to the program, quadrupling the staff dedicated to processing applications by May 1 and increasing it six-fold by August 1.  The administration went from issuing 100 visas per week in March to more than 1,000 per week in August.

To date, the Administration has worked to resettle 165,000 Afghans who the American people have welcomed to communities across our country.[22] 

Our commitment to helping resettle thousands of Afghan allies has continued well past the withdrawal.

Over the past few years, we’ve worked to resettle tens of thousands of Afghan families within the United States, welcoming them to their new homes and communities and demonstrating the very best of American generosity. Many international partner nations and organizations assist us in this ongoing effort. Since September 1, 2021, the Administration has approved or welcomed to the United States more than 80,000 Afghans under the SIV program. In Fiscal Year 2023 (FY2023) alone we issued more than 18,000 Afghan SIVs, the most in a single year. In this fiscal year (FY2024), we have already surpassed that total.

The Department has also rebuilt the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP), which was deliberately undermined and partially dismantled by the prior administration. Drawing on best practices from processing Afghan cases in near real-time has helped make this rehabilitation a success story and speaks to the strength and ingenuity of Department and interagency personnel, as well as our refugee resettlement nonprofit partners. So far for this fiscal year, we have interviewed more than 20,000 Afghan refugees in 44 countries, contributing to the admission of one of the highest numbers of refugees through USRAP in a single year in more than three decades.[23]

Ensuring we fulfill our promises to those individuals who stood by our side is one aspect of our continued commitment to the people of Afghanistan. Since August 2021, the United States has provided more than $2.2 billion in funding toward the humanitarian response inside Afghanistan and for Afghans in neighboring countries through established partners with rigorous vetting standards.[24]  The United States is also the single largest humanitarian donor for Afghans in Afghanistan and neighboring countries, providing more than $844 million in humanitarian assistance in FY 2023.[25] 

The Department also stands with the women and girls of Afghanistan and has repeatedly called for their access to education and careers to be restored following edicts by Taliban leaders banning women from universities and working with NGOs. For example, through the establishment of the Afghan Women’s Economic Resilience initiative, a public-private partnership between the Department of State and Boston University, the Department has catalyzed innovative and scalable partnerships between the private sector, civil society, academia, government, and Afghan women leaders to support Afghan women’s education, employment, and entrepreneurship.

The Department remains committed to ensuring that Afghanistan never again becomes a launching pad for terrorism, and we continue to push the Taliban to fulfill all their counterterrorism commitments. We are taking a whole-of-government approach to our Afghanistan counterterrorism efforts, cooperating with partners and allies. We are working vigilantly to prevent the re-emergence of external threats from Afghanistan.

**

There are valid and important criticisms of the two-decade-long war in Afghanistan and how it concluded, which is why the Department has remained focused on evolving and growing from this moment, learning important lessons and making sustainable changes to crisis operations.

In December 2021, the Secretary asked retired Ambassador Dan Smith — a long-serving veteran of the Department — to lead a review of how the Department carried out its duties between January 2020 and August 2021. Ambassador Smith and team interviewed 150 people — including Secretary Blinken — and had access to all contemporaneous records. Studying and learning from Ambassador Smith’s review is a vital component of building a stronger Department that is better prepared to respond to future challenges and to fulfill our mission.

This after-action review[26]  made recommendations on several areas where the Department could have done better by improving processes and systems.  In the interest of maximum transparency, the unclassified sections of this after-action review have been made public.  The Department has already taken more than 40 concrete actions and identified additional steps to guide itself in responding to future crises, including a new, state-of-the-art Operations Center opened in August 2022 with increased surge capacity and modern technology to facilitate information sharing, streamline coordination, and promote a common operating picture.

**

The Department once again expresses its respect for the Congress and its Members who remain dedicated to reviewing the actions taken ahead of and during August 2021. It is our sincere hope the Administration can work hand-in-hand with Congress to make improvements from the lessons learned from the withdrawal. The Department stands ready to work alongside any Member who expresses serious interest in finding legislative and administrative solutions. However, we will not stand by silently as the Department and its workforce are used to further partisan agendas.

State Department Comment on House Foreign Affairs Committee Afghanistan Review
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How Fares the Afghan Private Sector? Trying to run a business in a “stagnant” economy

September 8, 2024

Kate Clark • AAN Team

There is a consensus that the private sector is crucial to getting any real growth back into the Afghan economy – described by the World Bank as “persistently stagnant.” Long-term growth, it said, was contingent on a “more resilient, private-sector led economy that capitalizes on the nation’s inherent strengths.” Boosting the private sector is also high on the list of the Islamic Emirate’s policy aims; ‘Enabling the Private Sector’ was one of two topics chosen for discussion at the United Nations hosted Doha III conference, which brought Emirate officials and special envoys together on 30 June and 1 July. In this light, Kate Clark and the AAN team wanted to look deeply at the Afghan economy and the prospects for private-sector growth. However, their starting point was not World Bank analysis or the more positive take of Emirate officials, but interviews with Afghan business owners about their everyday struggles.

You can preview the report online and download it by clicking here or the download button below.

We spoke to seven men and two women, all with employees and all but one with a business pre-dating the fall of the Islamic Republic. Our nine interviewees, based in Nangrahar, Mazar-e Sharif, Paktia, Bamyan, Kandahar and Kabul, include the owner of a factory that processes pulses; an importer of crockery and glassware for domestic retail, a trader in potatoes and onions; the deputy manager of a factory making pressure cookers; a children’s clothes manufacturer; the owner of a rug-making factory; the owner of an embroidery business; and a herbalist. We also conducted a number of less in-depth interviews in Kandahar.

Three of the interviewees said their businesses were flourishing, one after a significant decline because of Covid-19, followed by the change of government and collapse in the economy. Most, though, were struggling and most had downsized. The businesspeople spoke of plummeting sales and having to lay employees off or dip into savings to retain staff when profits could not cover wages. They described problems ranging from shrinking consumer demand to delays and bureaucracy at customs, high taxes, cheap imports, lack of capital, problems with banking and a patchy electricity supply.

Their day-to-day problems provide the context for the second section of the report which scrutinises the national economy. It considers the main takeaways of the World Bank’s most recent ‘Afghanistan Development Update’, published in April 2024, which was packed with information and was gloomy in its outlook, and the Emirate’s responses, which were far more positive. This report considers the reasons behind the shrinking of the economy when the Republic fell and the resulting sharp contraction in consumer demand. It looks at dynamics about which Emirate officials are proud, but the Bank is worried about, such as deflation and the strong currency. It looks at Emirate revenue collection and spending, including its focus on the security services, and the economic impact of the opium ban and changing Pakistani policy on trade and exports/imports.

The paper ends by looking at what our nine businesspeople, the Bank and the Islamic Emirate say would help the Afghan private sector, as well as the wider economy, to flourish. All the policy options, the report concludes, are highly political and would involve the Emirate or donors backing down on principled positions, or difficult domestic considerations, or measures by neighbours and countries further afield that would go against their perceived interests. Yet until at least some of these changes happen, it is difficult to see Afghanistan finding its way to an upward path of real sustained growth.

You can preview the report online and download it by clicking here or the download button below.

How fares the Afghan private sector FINALDownload

AUTHORS:

Kate Clark

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AAN Team

How Fares the Afghan Private Sector? Trying to run a business in a “stagnant” economy
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Trump appears to have misled Gold Star families on troop deaths in Afghanistan

September 6, 2024
Analysis by

The Washington Post

“We didn’t lose one person in 18 months. And then they took over that disaster.”

— Former president Donald Trump, in a video of him at Arlington National Cemetery speaking to the families of U.S. troops killed at Abbey Gate in Afghanistan, posted on TikTok, Aug. 28

This TikTok of Trump’s controversial visit to Arlington, where he marked the third anniversary of a suicide bombing that killed 13 U.S. troops during the chaotic evacuation of Afghanistan overseen by President Joe Biden,has been viewed more than 11 million times. Federal law prohibits election-related activities at military cemeteries, but Trump’s entourage pushed past a cemetery employee who tried to prevent Trump’s aides from bringing cameras, according to the Army.

Those cameras appear to have recorded Trump saying these words to the Gold Star families. (The TikTok shows him talking to families as the words are spoken as a voice-over.) In his phrasing, it sounds as if no troops were killed in Afghanistan during the last 18 months of his presidency. That’s false, though as we will show, there was an 18-month gap with no fatalities across Trump’s and Biden’s combined presidencies.

The Facts

A Trump campaign spokesman did not respond to queries about why Trump says there were no fatalities over 18 months. Using the Defense Casualty Analysis System, we first reviewed every 18-month period in Trump’s four years as president, looking only at deaths in hostile action in Afghanistan during Operation Freedom’s Sentinel, not accidental deaths such as in a vehicle or helicopter crash. There was no such period.

Then we focused on the last 18 months of his presidency — July 20, 2019, to Jan. 20, 2021. That makes the most sense since Trump referenced Biden’s taking over. The Defense Department database showed 12 deaths from hostile action in that period. We double-checked with the news releases issued by the Pentagon in that period and confirmed the 12 names

The last two deaths occurred on Feb. 8, 2020. Javier Jaguar Gutierrez of San Antonio and Antonio Rey Rodriguez of Las Cruces, New Mexico, both 28, werefatally ambushed by a rogue Afghan policeman. Trump, along with Vice President Mike Pence, flew to Dover Air Force Base when the bodies arrived in the United States.

That was 11 months before Trump’s presidency ended. The suicide bombing at Kabul’s airport that killed the 13 troops took place on Aug. 26, 2021 — seven months into Biden’s presidency. The last 11 months of Trump’s presidency and the first seven of Biden’s add up to 18 months.

In March 2020, Trump approved an agreement with the Taliban (not the Afghan government at the time) for all U.S. forces to leave the country by May 1, 2021. He sealed the deal with a phone conversation with Abdul Ghani Baradar, a co-founder of the Taliban and head of its political office in Qatar. “We had a good long conversation today and, you know, they want to cease the violence,” Trump told reporters at the time. “They’d like to cease violence also.”

Despite abandoning many of Trump’s policies, Biden honored this one, just stretching out the departure by a few months in 2021.

Trump even celebrated Biden’s decision to stick with the withdrawal. “Getting out of Afghanistan is a wonderful and positive thing to do. I planned to withdraw on May 1st, and we should keep as close to that schedule as possible,” he said in a written statement after Biden announced he would continue the departure set in motion by Trump.At a political rally on June 26 that year, weeks before the collapse of the Afghan government, Trump bragged that he had made it difficult for Biden to change course. “I started the process. All the troops are coming back home. They couldn’t stop the process,” he said. “Twenty-one years is enough, don’t we think? Twenty-one years. They [the Biden administration] couldn’t stop the process. They wanted to, but it was very tough to stop the process.”

In about a half-dozen campaign rallies and media events last month, Trump mentioned his conversation with the Taliban leader and tied it to the 18-month period without deaths in hostile action. But often Trump left the impression — as in the TikTok with the Gold Star families — that this only happened on his watch. Here are some examples:

  • “Abdul was not playing games with me. You know, they were executing a lot of our soldiers. And I spoke to him, I said, ‘Abdul, don’t do it anymore. There’ll be no more.’ Anyway, I said it pretty tough. And you know what? For 18 months, we didn’t have one American soldier killed in Afghanistan. And then I left, and then I left, and there’s a bunch of incompetent people took over, and it all started up again.” (Rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Aug. 17.)
  • “We had no soldiers killed for 18 months while I was there because they knew — don’t play around with our soldiers.” (Rally in Asheboro, N.C., Aug. 21.)
  • “I dealt with Abdul, and he’s still the leader, strong man, smart man, but he understood that if he did anything because we were losing a lot of people to the snipers. … And he understood. And he said, ‘Yes, Your Excellency, I understand.’ He called me Your Excellency. I wonder if he calls that to Biden. I doubt it, right? But he understood that and he respected us. And for 18 months, not one American soldier was killed, not one.” (Remarks at a news conference in Bedminster, N.J., Aug. 15.)

But on occasion, Trump gets it close to correct, such as in these remarks during a news conference in Palm Beach, Fla., on Aug. 8: “You know, if you go back and check your records, for 18 months, I had a talk with Abdul. Abdul was the leader of the Taliban, still is. But I had a strong talk with him. For 18 months, not one American soldier was shot at or killed, not even shot at, 18 months.”

The Defense Department determined that the suicide bomber, Abdul Rahman al-Logari, was not a member of the Taliban but part of the Islamic State-Khorasan, a regional branch of the Islamic State terrorist group. He was one of several thousand ISIS-K members released by the Taliban in mid-August 2021 and one of several possible suicide bombers the group had available for the attack, according to a review of the investigation completed in April.

Trump appears to have misled Gold Star families on troop deaths in Afghanistan
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The Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice Law, translated into English

September 3, 2024

John Butt

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The Islamic Emirate’s supreme leader, Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada, has issued a new law laying out the duties, powers and punishments available to the enforcers of the Ministry for Promoting Virtue and Preventing Vice. The law also specifies numerous acts and particular behaviour that the Emirate deems either obligatory or forbidden for Afghan citizens. Today, AAN has published a basic translation of the 114-page, 35-article law, without its extensive footnotes, by Islamic scholar, John Butt.* We plan to publish a full version with footnotes, as well as a review of the new law.
The Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice Law, in Pashto and Dari, can be downloaded from the Ministry of Justice website (search for 1452, using Arabic numerals, ie ۱۴۵۲). A working, basic translation of the law into English is available for preview and download below. 

The new law, issued on 21 August 2024, lays out the duties and powers of those enforcing it, the employees of the Ministry for Promoting Virtue and Preventing Vice, which the Emirate re-established when it retook power in August 2021. The enforcers (muhtasibin), the law says, should respect everyone’s social standing and human dignity, not pry into people’s private sins and avoid entering their homes. It gives them extensive powers to punish wrongdoers with penalties ranging from verbal admonishment to fines to prison.

The law details many acts which are forbidden or obligatory. Acts that enforcers should prevent include adultery, fornication, lesbianism, anal sex, gambling, animal and bird fighting, making pictures of animate objects, beard-shaving, befriending non-Muslims, observing Nawruz and Shab-e Yalda (festivals on the spring equinox and winter solstice) and dealing harshly with orphans. Enforcers, the law says, should refer those not praying, not fasting during Ramadan, or disobeying their parents to a court of law. Special injunctions apply to shopkeepers, farmers, artisans, taxi drivers and those responsible for beauty spots and tourist attractions.

The law orders women to cover their bodies and faces entirely and not speak or sing loud enough for non-family members to hear them. Men must dress so as to cover their bodies from navel to knee.

(See also a statement on the new law from the Ministry of Justice.)

We are publishing a basic translation of the law in response to demand from our readers, but are looking forward to publishing a complete translation, including the extensive footnotes, along with a separate section on praying, as well as a review.

You can preview the report online and download it by clicking here or the download button below.

Law on Virtue and Vice BasicDownload

 

*John Butt came to journalism and broadcasting from a traditional madrasa education; he was a graduate of the Darul Uloom Deoband seminary in northern India. For the last thirty years, he has been responsible for setting up radio serial dramas – storytelling in a contemporary setting – including in Afghanistan – ‘New Home, New Life’ in the 1990s and, more recently, a cross-border radio drama called ‘Da Pulay Poray’.

His previous report for AAN, ‘A Taleban Theory of State: A review of the Chief Justice’s book of jurisprudence, reviewed a book by the Islamic Emirate’s Chief Justice, Abdul Hakim Haqqani. ‘Al-Emarat al-Islamiya wa Nidhamuha’ (The Islamic Emirate and its System of Governance) is the fullest and most authoritative account yet of what the Taleban believe an Islamic state should be like. 

 

The Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice Law, translated into English
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Here’s how we can help oppressed women and girls in Afghanistan

September 3, 2024

The Guardian

Your harrowing report on the worsening oppression of women in Afghanistan reminds us that our business in that country, despite the withdrawal of troops in 2021, is not done (‘Frightening’ Taliban law bans women from speaking in public, 26 August). Controversial though aspects of the Afghan campaign were, one undisputed success was the positive movement towards achieving the development goal of improving women’s education and rights. All that has been lost under the Taliban, and it would appear that they now wish to restrict women’s rights still further.

Short of another intervention, what can we do? For a start, we should open up the Afghan civil resettlement scheme still further: all those women thrown out of university by the Taliban should be offered visas and a chance to finish their studies in the UK. It will not be easy for them to get out, but it is not impossible.

Further, using the resources of the BBC World Service, we should offer a comprehensive distance-learning package to all women in Afghanistan.

The last element is to extract the costs of these measures from our bloated aid budget to Pakistan, which remains one of the major recipients of overseas development aid. While there is much need in Pakistan, it also manages to keep nearly 1 million (mostly) men under arms and has an active nuclear weapons programme. If it can afford those, it does not need our aid. Since the Pakistani spy agency, the ISI, has historically supported the Taliban, the country’s responsibility for the plight of Afghanistan’s women is manifest.

In effect, by providing Pakistan with aid, we are subsidising both its militarism and the oppression of Afghan women – this must stop.
Simon Diggins
Defence attache, Kabul 2008-10

 The situation for all Afghan women and girls is indeed dire, as spelled out in your editorial (20 August). Just when 11- and 12-year-old girls in Britain are about to start at their secondary schools, their contemporaries in Afghanistan are denied any education, and only a small minority are able to access teaching online. Many young girls are being forced into child marriages, especially if their mothers are impoverished widows, and prohibited from working outside the home. Their futures tragically damaged, their hopes crushed. What can be done for them?

Recently, I was able to put one such girl in Kabul, who had managed to learn English online, in touch with an 11-year-old schoolgirl here, and they are now joyfully corresponding – opening their hearts and minds to each other, each one learning about another sort of life.

Is this not an arrangement that we can spread across the country? Fostering such relationships between young girls from different cultures could be a source of hope for future peace.
Margaret Owen
London

Here’s how we can help oppressed women and girls in Afghanistan
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Mani once sang of freedom in Afghanistan. Now, silenced, she’s desperate to escape. Will Australia help?

September 3, 2024

The Guardian
Sun 1 Sept 2024

This brave journalist and young women like her are bearing the brunt of the failed democratisation project: ‘Hope is fading’

It’s three years since Australia pulled its final troops out of Afghanistan. Their presence over two decades saw the country emerge from the ashes of civil war, embrace a relative peace and a fragile democracy before falling back into the darkness of fundamentalism under the Taliban.

Now young women like Mani are bearing the brunt of this failed democratisation project. Like other Afghan women and their families, she is desperately seeking asylum in Australia – somewhere safe to live.

I’ve known Mani for years. She’s a brave journalist hailing from Afghanistan’s Hazara minority and has faced crippling oppression under the onslaught of Islamic State and the Taliban. She has been threatened and chased by the terrorists because of her profession, her ideals and her identity. But this young journo is holding on; punching back at the militants with her critical reporting. She told me that she is now running out of time, options and, most importantly – hope.

During Australia’s presence from 2001 till 2021, Mani had the chance to study and dream of a life filled with opportunities and equality.

Now, at 25, she feels abandoned and left to suffer at the mercy of a regime that has aggressively removed women from all areas of public life.

“I had a dream and I was committed to nurture values of freedom and equality in Afghanistan through poetry and journalism,” she told me via phone from an undisclosed location.

“But the world left us alone at the mercy of the wolves who have no shame in beating, silencing and killing women.”

When I asked why she chose Australia for her humanitarian visa application, she said the country had been a second home for her ethnic Hazara community, who have thrived and contributed immensely to the society. “I have always admired [Australian Afghan broadcaster] Yalda Hakim and want to be like her,” she said.

Girls of Resistance and Enlightenment remains her favourite poem; she it sang at many public gatherings in Kabul to warn against the Taliban’s takeover of the country:

Beating their chests for freedom

Holding on to wisdom

Enlightened like the sun

Chanting for liberty

Girls of love and freedom

Girls of resistance and enlightenment

The Taliban supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, has empowered his regime’s moral policing unit to ensure that women completely veil their bodies – including their faces – in thick clothing at all times in public.

This week the regime went further by introducing “frightening” laws that ban women from speaking in public. The laws label female voices as potential instruments of “vice” that need to be censored, regulated and silenced.

This means women must not be heard singing or reading aloud, even from inside their houses. “Whenever an adult woman leaves her home out of necessity, she is obliged to conceal her voice, face and body,” the new laws say.

Australia has condemned this latest effort to silence Afghan women and girls.

“We stand together with the women and girls of Afghanistan, and in support of their human rights,” the foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, tweeted this week.

But is Australia really doing all it can to ensure that vulnerable and deserving women like Mani are getting a fair chance of life and a safe haven?

Mani submitted her visa application last year and only received a file number in February. “I haven’t heard anything [from the Department of Home Affairs] since then,” she told me. “I am in a desperate state of waiting while my options, resources and hope are fading.”

To halt the drastic erosion of human rights – and reverse this course towards the darkness in Afghanistan – Australia must indeed stand together with Afghan women and girls. This starts by expediting their humanitarian visa requests and giving them the freedom that they so badly deserve.

Only then can Australia say that it has ensured Afghan women are able to raise their strong voices – to never be silenced again.

  • Shadi Khan Saif is a Melbourne-based journalist and former Afghanistan and Pakistan news correspondent

Mani once sang of freedom in Afghanistan. Now, silenced, she’s desperate to escape. Will Australia help?
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Biden administration botched retreat from Afghanistan. Women are still paying the price.

August 30, 2024
Portrait of Nicole Russell

Nicole Russell

USA TODAY
August 29, 2024
Vice President Kamala Harris should be held accountable for the devastating cruelty the administration’s choices unleashed.

It’s hard to believe that in 2024, millions of women aren’t allowed to attend school past age 12, to bare their faces on the street or even to speak while in public.

Yet, that is the case for women in Afghanistan, living under the Taliban’s terror-inducing rule.

For the Biden-Harris administration, the consequences of America’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 still echo today.

Will Vice President Kamala Harris be held accountable in this year’s election for the administration’s chaotic retreat, which enabled the Taliban to seize power again? It’s doubtful.

The Taliban strip women of equal rights, dignity

Burqa-clad women walk in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, on Aug. 14, 2024, three years after the U.S. military left the nation and the Taliban took over.

Last week, Taliban rulers formally codified strict new morality policies into law, including a ban on a woman’s ability to speak and bare their faces in public.

“According to this law, the Ministry (for Prevention of Vice and Propagation of Virtue) is obligated to promote good and forbid evil in accordance with Islamic Sharia,” the Justice Ministry said in a statement.

The new laws are set out in a 35-article document regulating every aspect of Afghans’ lives. Article 13 requires that women veil their bodies and cover their faces in public and that their clothes cannot be form-fitting or short. Women are also banned from singing, reciting or reading aloud in public. They also cannot look at men who they are not related to by blood or marriage.

The rules affect men, too. All men must grow beards, and no one can play music in their cars.

The media also must abide by sharia law; the publication of images containing living beings is now banned.

Penalties for violations include “warnings of divine punishment, verbal threats, confiscation of property, detention for one hour to three days in public jails, and any other punishment deemed appropriate.”

Where’s the outcry from women in America?

Afghan women have long endured abuse at the hands of the Taliban, who first seized full control of the country in 1996. But after the terrorist attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, American and allied forces pushed the Taliban from power.

That set off two decades of war that ended with the Afghan government’s collapse and the Taliban’s return to rule in 2021, soon after President Joe Biden ordered U.S. forces to abandon the country.

Despite these atrocities, there has been little outcry recently from women’s groups in America, where gender parity has made extraordinary progress in the past few decades. Their silence about the suffering of Afghan women is stunning.

At the Democratic National Convention last week, a Planned Parenthood mobile clinic was on site to offer abortion pills to women and vasectomies for men. Though Planned Parenthood released a statement on Israel and Gaza in December, my search on the organization’s website for a statement on Afghanistan or the Taliban turned up zero results.

While Afghanistan may seem far from the United States, that distance should not encourage silence. In fact, it is because women in America enjoy so many rights that we should be the first to speak in defense of fellow women stripped of basic human rights by a radical regime.

Biden, along with Harris, initiated a chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan that resulted in the deaths of 13 U.S. service members and more than 100 Afghans when a bomb explode near the Kabul airport.

The disorganized exit meant that the U.S. military abandoned up to 200 U.S. citizens and tens of thousands of Afghan allies to oppression under Taliban rule.

During Harris’ DNC acceptance speech Thursday night, the Democratic presidential nominee left out any mention of the botched withdrawal and Afghanistan’s ongoing suffering. She did claim that her administration would be pro-military and tough on tyrants. How could she be tough on tyrants but silent about the Taliban?

Before America’s sudden exit, Afghan women were able to attend schools and universities and even hold elected office. Now, they face terrible oppression that denies them basic human dignity.

Harris should be held accountable for America’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan and for the devastating cruelty the administration’s choices unleashed.

Nicole Russell is an opinion columnist with USA TODAY. She lives in Texas with her four kids.

Biden administration botched retreat from Afghanistan. Women are still paying the price.
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Working with the Taliban would not legitimate its rule

August 30, 2024
By Saad Mohseni

Saad Mohseni is the co-founder, chairman and executive officer of Moby Group, Afghanistan’s largest media company, and the author of “Radio Free Afghanistan.”

The Washington Post

Afghanistan still has hope for a better future. The world needs to engage in order to sustain it.

Three years have passed since the chaotic U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan and the takeover of the country by the Taliban. The botched exit wasn’t merely a logistical disaster but a greater failure of strategic vision: Little was done to ensure that the investments of more than 2 trillion dollars and tens of thousands of lives over 20 years to build a stable, democratic Afghanistan were safeguarded.

Forty million Afghans were simply abandoned to an uncertain future — and millions have since fled the country as a result. Years of hard-won progress has been undone as women’s roles in Afghan society, media and politics have been diminished.

And indeed, things are getting worse for women. Recently, the Taliban leadership codified new laws banning women’s voices and bare faces in public, empowering their morality ministry to regulate personal conduct and impose penalties for violations. Although it remains uncertain whether all government institutions and ministries will enforce these laws, full implementation could erase women from public life in Afghanistan.

But Afghanistan is also a more complicated place than a first glance can reveal. I am still running Tolo TV, the largest television network in Afghanistan, and my colleagues are still working in our offices in Kabul. We face great difficulties, but we negotiate and fight for our space every day in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. Tolo News continues to report the truth: Our journalists — including female colleagues — are still reporting across the country, and we have been demanding accountability more effectively than many had anticipated. So many brave colleagues working for homegrown media inside Afghanistan continue to prove every day that although not easy, it’s still possible to be an effective, independent journalist in Afghanistan.

We find the inspiration and the courage to carry on from stories like “Kar o Ebtekar,” a series about female Afghan entrepreneurs — one of our most watched programs this year, with an audience of over 20 million. One segment followed four young Afghan women who, after the Taliban barred them from attending university, pooled resources and expertise to start a small mushroom production business. The episode about a 27-year-old fish farmer in Bamian who overcame numerous setbacks and earned the support of her husband and her community garnered over 1 million views on Facebook alone. These women are scratching out success despite severe financial constraints and absence of institutional support. And the nation is hungry for their stories.

One of the most heartbreaking consequences of the Taliban’s return to power has been the ban on girls’ schooling after sixth grade. A generation of girls is being denied the opportunity to learn, grow and contribute to their society. To try to address this tragedy, my colleagues and I took a risk last year and started producing and broadcasting science and math programs for television, radio and online to improve the access to and quality of education for all Afghan students. The programs have reached millions across the country — and students, families and teachers are demanding more.

Since the collapse of the Afghan government, the United States and its allies have pursued a policy of isolating and punishing the Taliban. They seized Afghanistan’s central bank reserves and mostly limited aid to preventing outright famine. Unfortunately, coercing the Taliban has failed. The Taliban continues to pursue its unyielding social agenda, and it appears here to stay.

The United States and its allies need to recalibrate their policies to help Afghans today, not in some imaginary post-Taliban future. Taking a more pragmatic approach to engagement with the Taliban does not mean legitimizing its rule or ignoring its human rights abuses. Rather, it means recognizing that isolation and sanctions have done little to change the situation on the ground. A policy of conditional engagement could be more effective in encouraging positive changes.

There are countless ways to approach this goal. The United States could offer dialogue on a number of issues of mutual interest — civic projects, tax collection, reduced opium production and improved security — alongside targeted economic and development support. U.S. officials would have to travel to Afghanistan to monitor progress, but this would not entail officially recognizing the Taliban. Washington could open an office in Kabul to provide consular services for eligible Afghans, perhaps staffed by contractors or third-party nationals. There are still tens of thousands of Afghans eligible for U.S. visas, but caseload processing is painfully slow without people on the ground. To signal its concern for improving the Afghan economy, the United States should initiate a process to test the Afghan central bank’s effectiveness in managing monetary policy and help improve its capacity by encouraging Turkey, Qatar and Malaysia to train young Afghan bankers.

These kinds of initiatives would set up a lot of small tests — building confidence and a track record along the way. These kinds of measures could also help alleviate the poverty crisis, which disproportionately affects women and girls.

The Taliban’s politics is complex. It is not a monolithic movement even if dissent is well contained, with officials falling in line with decisions when they are decreed. As part of my job, I speak with Taliban officials aligned with various power centers within the movement. Ultimately, the pragmatic leaders and commanders know that they have the power to move toward a seat on the global table if they can offer improvements on human rights issues.

Afghanistan still has hope. By investing in Afghanistan’s development, supporting education and women’s empowerment, and engaging pragmatically with the Taliban, the United States and its allies can help build a more stable, prosperous and inclusive Afghanistan.

Working with the Taliban would not legitimate its rule
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 Afghanistan goes back to war — against women

August 29, 2024
The Washington Post
The Taliban wants to create a society of gender apartheid.

When the Taliban took power in Afghanistan after the August 2021 U.S. withdrawal, the radical Islamist group prohibited education for all girls beyond sixth grade. The Taliban said it was just a “temporary” measure. But then the regime followed up with a procession of decrees and rules that robbed women of their rights to education, health care, a livelihood and liberty. The schools never reopened. It turns out that nothing about the Taliban’s abuse of women was temporary.

Many of these repressive measures have now been codified into a 114-page “Law on the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.” Taliban leaders revealed the new law, with penalties, last week in the first formal declaration of vice and virtue laws in Afghanistan since the takeover. The Associated Press viewed the text and published the details.

The new law underscores that the Taliban wants to create a society of gender apartheid, in which the government silences women’s voices, robs them of their rights and makes them totally dependent on men. Afghanistan is experiencing the worst crisis of women’s rights in the world today.

After the chaotic U.S. departure from Kabul, some diplomats speculated that the Taliban would be forced to give up the harsh rule it imposed between 1996 and 2001 because it would need international recognition to avert a severe humanitarian crisis. A Taliban spokesman announced at a news conference in August 2021 that it would not have enemies, internal or external. But these soothing promises turned out to be nonsense. The Taliban of today is every bit as dehumanizing as the old.

According to the AP account of the new law, it mandates that women veil their bodies at all times in public and dictates that a face covering is essential to avoid temptations. Clothing should not be thin, tight or short. Women should veil themselves in front of all male strangers, including Muslims, and in front of all non-Muslims to avoid being corrupted. A woman’s voice is deemed intimate and so should not be heard singing, reciting or reading in public. It is forbidden for women to look at men they are not related to by blood or marriage, and vice versa. The law bans the playing of music, the transportation of solo female travelers and the mixing of men and women who are not related. The law also obliges passengers and drivers to perform prayers at designated times. Further, the law bans the publication of images of living beings, the AP reported, “threatening an already fragile Afghan media landscape.”

The Taliban is destroying the country it governs. The absence of women and girls from education and commerce — aside from being a gross violation of their human rights — will harm the nation’s already floundering economy. The Taliban is afflicted with a sick and costly mysoginism. In October 2022, it banned women from choosing agriculture, mining, civil engineering, veterinary medicine and journalism as university majors, saying these subjects were “too difficult” for women. In December 2022, it banned women from public and private universities altogether.

As Sahar Fetrat and Heather Barr of Human Rights Watch have pointed out, on the day before the Taliban took over, millions of Afghan girls were in school. “More than a quarter of the members of parliament were women. Women were government ministers and judges and professors and helicopter pilots. Women were singers and painters and conceptual artists and actors. There was a girls’ orchestra.” Now all of it is gone.

The international community must not look away. Whenever there are contacts with the Taliban, other nations should include women in the delegations and speak out constantly in defense of the rights of women in Afghanistan. Overseas aid from around the world should be sent specifically to help women and girls and to keep alive the underground schools that, we are told, have been struggling to fill some of the gap caused by the Taliban’s measures.

It would help keep hope alive among these women and girls to hear the United States speak out more about their plight; many were encouraged to claim their rightful place in society during the two decades of the American presence, but now they feel lost and forgotten.

At the same time, the Taliban cannot escape accountability for this unconscionable smothering of the ambitions and daily lives of half the population. The U.S. Magnitsky Act was created to target those who grossly violate human rights; why not aim its sanctions at more the leaders of Afghanistan, who have promulgated such draconian laws?

 Afghanistan goes back to war — against women
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Treating Drug Users in Afghanistan: How to respond to a massive problem? 

August 28, 2024

Jelena Bjelica • Rohullah Sorush

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Afghanistan was, until recently, famously, the largest cultivator of illegal opiates in the world. Less well-known is that it is among the countries with the highest prevalence rates of drug use. In April 2022, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) banned poppy cultivation and subsequently, in January 2023, its supreme leader issued an order saying that prevention of drug use was the duty of the Islamic system and that “governors of all provinces should take necessary action” to prevent people for this harm. Most recently, on 1 July 2024, the IEA formed a counter-narcotics commission that will deal, among other issues, with the treatment of drug users. AAN’s Rohullah Sorush and Jelena Bjelica consider the massive scale of Afghanistan’s drug use problem, Emirate policies and the impact of the typically rough approach to drug rehabilitation treatments offered by the state.

I was a kid when our family went to Iran. … I left school and started working in a publishing factory. There were people who used opium in that factory. I wanted to do my job properly and not get tired easily, so I also started using opium. I really enjoyed it. It helped relieve my fatigue. 

I was still using opium after I left the factory. I enjoyed it, but the pleasure was temporary. … I used drugs for almost 14 years. I started with opium and then moved on to other drugs, such as heroin and crystal meth. Crystal changed my appearance. My teeth rotted. … When I came back to Afghanistan, I could only find opium and heroin easily. I didn’t use crystal after I returned from Iran.

Every person with a drug problem has their own story of how it all began. This man, 45-year-old Reza from Balkh, is a former drug user of 14 years who like many Afghans started using opium when he was living in Iran.[1] Opium, contrary to the movie-created myths about its effects, is often used in Iran and Afghanistan by manual labourers to get some relief from the pain of sore muscles and to suppress their appetite because it slows down the digestive system. Other explanations given by our interviewees of why they started using drugs included how it helped ease physical pain, numb trauma or because others were using them.

Afghanistan has a massive problem with drug use. The last Afghanistan National Drug Use Survey, commissioned by the Colombo Plan in 2015, estimated that the country could have had between 2.9 and 3.6 million drug users, which would translate into about a tenth of the population using drugs. 31 per cent of the households whose members were tested were found to have at least one person who was using drugs.[2] The rate of drug use was estimated to be higher in men than women (16  per cent of those tested, compared to 9.5 per cent, with children testing at a comparable rate to women) and three times higher in rural than urban areas (13 per cent compared to 5 per cent), with rural households also testing higher (39 per cent compared to 11 per cent).

The most prevalent drugs, the survey found, were opioids (including heroin, opium and prescription drugs like codeine) – 19 per cent of those tested,[3] followed by cannabis – 11 per cent and two classes of pharmaceutical drugs that are generally prescribed for anxiety and insomnia – benzodiazepines, such as Valium – 5.1 per cent and barbiturates, such as phenobarbital – 1.1 per cent. Since then, methamphetamine, often referred to as crystal meth or in Afghanistan shisha, has emerged as a new drug with widespread use (see AAN reporting from 2015 here), alongside what Afghans refer to as ‘tablet K’, a cocktail of methamphetamine, opium and MDMA/Ecstasy.[4]

Since returning to power, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) has moved to address various narcotics-related issues. In April 2022, Supreme Leader Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada banned the cultivation of opium and the production of opiates and other drugs and on 25 January 2023 issued a new order with a policy aimed at drug users:[5]

Because using drugs can slowly affect a person’s life, the Islamic system has a duty to prevent its people from using every kind of drug. Governors of all provinces should take necessary action to prevent people in their province from using drugs. Centres and treatment facilities should be established for those already addicted, which must urgently fulfil whatever is necessary for their treatment.[6]

Following the third UN-convened meeting of special envoys on Afghanistan, held from 30 June to 1 July in Doha (see this AAN dossier on previous meetings), the office of the acting Deputy Prime Minister for Political Affairs Mawlawi Abdul Kabir announced the formation of a high commission dedicated to combating intoxicants and narcotics. The purpose of establishing the commission, he said, was to combat intoxicants and narcotics, find alternative crops for farmers and set up treatment for drug users, Afghanistan International reported.

A new drug user survey is underway that will provide more detail about the current usage of drugs in Afghanistan.[7] However, the scale of the problem is not in question,[8] nor is the certainty that there is a need to act and as the 2015 Afghanistan National Drug Use Survey concluded:

Drug use is a treatable chronic illness that can be controlled with appropriate treatment and follow-up programs. Funding for treatment, aftercare, and frequent testing is a long-term investment in Afghanistan that will have very positive social and economic outcomes.

Yet, moving from recognising the need for action to taking action is not so easy, both in terms of available resources and the methods used.

The availability of drug treatment centres 

The first thing to stress is that the number of treatment facilities for drug users, particularly centres outside the public sector, has fallen drastically since the collapse of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan in August 2021, as donor money dried up. That being said, how many drug treatment centres were actually operational before August 2021 is unclear, although there are a few pointers. The United States Department of State’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) reported that by 2020, it had established a network of 103 drug treatment centres providing residential, outpatient and home-based treatment services in partnership with the Colombo Plan Drug Advisory Programme (CPDAP). Several dozen drug treatment centres of various types (residential and non-residential) were also established by organisations partnering with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), with others such as Médecins du Monde (MDM) also running some of their own. Over the years, a number of these centres were handed over to the Afghan government. The Ministry of Public Health (MoPH), for example, reported that it ran 50 treatment centres in 2019.

Even during the Republic, the infrastructure for treating drug users was considered insufficient, given the number of people using drugs.[9] There was also concern about the lack of trained staff in government-run centres. This was documented in a 2019 Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction(SIGAR) report on the US government-funded drug demand reduction programmes that found that projects implemented between 2013 and 2018 had helped only three to five per cent of Afghan drug users.[10] Many centres that had been transferred to the Afghan government lost their trained staff because the MoPH did not keep its commitment to INL and had fired between 10 and 15 per cent of NGO staff working at the facilities. In some instances, SIGAR said, government officials had also forced trained staff to resign.

Afghan governments, both Republic and Emirate, have favoured large treatment centres that can admit thousands of patients, compared to donor-funded centres that cater for a maximum of 300. A case in point, as soon as the drug treatment decree was published in January 2023, was the opening of a 5,000-bed centre in Kabul (see a ToloNews report on the announcement here). Previously, the Ashraf Ghani government had opened a 1,000-bed centre on the grounds of the former military camp Phoenix in Kabul in late 2015 (see a ToloNews report from 2015 here).

Following the IEA takeover in August 2021, opportunities for treatment in smaller facilities shrank further. Many centres ceased to exist, especially those that had been supported by the US government, which froze its financial support to Kabul.

In May 2022, the Ministry of Public Health said that 44 out of 88 rehabilitation centres (not specified if all, or just government) were still active (see ToloNews report here). The most recent survey of the country’s existing drug treatment infrastructure, part of a national survey of drug use by UNDP and UNODC (see footnote 7) identified 113 centres, including three private hospitals, across 34 provinces. However, AAN was told by a source close to an ongoing survey that the data suggested that not all of them were still operational. In December 2023, The Lancet reported that only 10 per cent of treatment centres were still active:

According to email communication with Dr Abdul Qudos Saadat (Afghanistan Ministry of Public Health, personal communication) on Aug 16, 2023, following the Taliban takeover of the government and due to the reduction in international and public funds, only 10% of the drug treatment centres remained functional with international support, 44% were closed, and the remainder were running with a limited budget. Furthermore, as of Aug 15, 2023, the number of needle and syringe programmes had fallen to eight and the number of opioid substitution treatment sites had fallen to six.

A doctor from Kabul, who wished to remain anonymous, confirmed to AAN that most of the centres, especially outside the public sector, had indeed been closed:

In Kabul, most rehabilitation centres were in rented houses and after the political developments, the new government could not pay the rent, so they were shut down. For the moment, only the government-run centres are functioning and treating people with an addiction. Now, there are 59 treatment centres active all over the country. There are also huge camps in Kabul, Kandahar and Herat. The Deputy Ministry of Interior for Counter-Narcotics established these camps, but the Directorate of Narcotics of the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) provides the services for them.

An MoPH official quoted in The Lancet article, Dr Saadat, was also quoted as saying the situation for drug users in the government camps was not good as there were no doctors and shortages of other professional staff, medicine and facilities (see also this report from Hasht-e Subh here).

AAN contacted several doctors working in the provinces to get a snapshot of the situation there. Dr Khalil Nurzai from Nimruz described the woeful under-resourcing of an 80-bed hospital for male drug users and a 20-bed hospital for women in his province:

There are no doctors in the 80-bed hospital. When there are no doctors, how can you provide treatment? How do you meet the patient’s health needs? It is even worse in the 20-bed hospital for women. There are no doctors or nurses. There is only a cook and a guard.

In Kandahar, the chief physician at the hospital for the treatment of male drug users, Dr Abdul Salaam Bashir, told AAN that there was no longer an active women’s treatment centre because the staff, including the doctors, had left the country after the fall of the Republic. However, he said that, since the re-establishment of the IEA, the capacity of the male treatment centre had increased from 70 to 100 beds.

The treatment is the same as under the previous government. Drug addicts have been rounded up, which is a good step, and I see that their number [on the streets] has decreased. There is not much relapse either because they don’t have easy access to drugs. 

He added that, to his knowledge, the IEA does plan to reopen the women’s centre, although it is not clear when.

A female medical employee in a women’s drug treatment centre in Bamyan told AAN there was insufficient capacity to treat the many drug users in the province.

There are two drug treatment centres, a 20-bed centre for men and another for women. I believe this is not enough for the number of drug users in Bamiyan. Although the IEA occasionally rounds up drug users and brings them to the treatment centre, many can still be seen in more remote of the city.

The director of a private treatment centre in Balkh, Muhammad Asif Anwari, said that MoPH’s 100-bed hospital for drug users in Balkh was still operational, but many private centres in the province had closed.

Treatment for drug users

One of the key aspects of IEA drug treatment policy is the use of force. The Ministry of Interior, for example, was quotedin February 2023 saying that more than 80,000 drug users had been “collected from across the country after the Islamic Emirate swept into power.” Although it is not clear exactly what “collected” meant, reporting from those months, such as this VOA video from April 2022, featured footage of raids and round-ups of drug users (VOA reported from Paktia and Daikundi provinces). In February 2023, ToloNews reported that 17,000 drug users had been ‘collected’ in the past month, including 60 women, some of them found under the flyover in Pul-e Sukhta in Police District 6 in west Kabul (see AAN’s previous report for background on this location). Officials in neighbouring Police District 5 said they had found 60 corpses during those operations.

By December 2023, according to the chief of staff for the Deputy Minister for Counter-Narcotics, Hasibullah Ahmadi, nearly 100,000 drug users had been rounded up across Afghanistan and taken to rehabilitation centres since the Emirate regained power (see this ToloNews report).[11] Once taken to a centre, drug users are subjected to zor darmani (referring to what, in English, is called ‘involuntary treatment’),[12] ie drug users are detained like criminals and forced to stop taking drugs in what is colloquially known as ‘cold turkey’. It is a method, says the UNODC, that is seldom effective and goes against basic human rights and freedoms. It often involves cold baths, staying in prison-like conditions, no painkillers and restriction of movement, including binding patients to beds. The first Emirate took the same approach, as described in detail by David Macdonald in his book, ‘Drugs in Afghanistan: Opium, Outlaws and Scorpion Tales’. The Republic’s drug treatment regime was subject to more external scrutiny than the IEA, but in the large treatment centres during that era, patients were often also subject to ‘cold turkey’ roughness.[13]

The private practitioner in Balkh, Dr Muhammad Asif Anwari, praised the Emirate for rounding up drug users, even though he did not think it a solution in itself:

I really admire the IEA for rounding up drug users from the streets and other places. It’s a positive step and a preventative measure. I believe this stops more people getting accustomed to drugs. This is something the previous government failed to do. In fact, in the last years of the Republic, drug users were everywhere, even in the space between two roads. It was really awful and had a bad effect on people, including schoolchildren, passing through those areas. Now, we don’t see drug users in public areas or under bridges. However, this doesn’t mean their number’s gone down or that many have been provided with treatment. I know people who use drugs in their homes and [other] places where the government can’t see them and in sarais [shopping malls or commercial premises]. At least in the northern provinces, such as Balkh, Baghlan, Samangan, Sar-e Pul and Jawzjan, I’m aware that there are drug users who are too afraid of the IEA to come to public places in the way they did before.

One lesson from the Republic, he said, was that private treatment centres are more successful than government ones because of their use of psycho-social counselling:

Authorities at that time [the Republic] were admitting that only three to five per cent of those treated [at government centres] did not ever relapse. However, about 20 per cent of those who received treatment in private clinics didn’t relapse. The treatment process in private centres was different. They only gave medicine to drug users for a few days, but then mostly talked to them to convince them to quit using drugs. Drug users received a lot of counselling and attended meetings with other drug users who had already quit.

Another doctor from a private clinic, Dr Farhad Shafaq in Ghazni city, also questioned what happened to drug users after they were rounded up. He said many had been taken away from under a bridge in the city and then to a camp:

They kept them there for treatment for five or six months. But when they were allowed to leave the camp, they relapsed. I believe it is because access to drugs is easy. They’re available everywhere. There are many [users] under the Pul-e Maida bridge [again]. Although opium cultivation has decreased, industrial drugs, such as methamphetamine, are available on the market.

To try and understand better the experiences of drug users, we spoke to a number of current and former users about their experiences. Some had received treatment in private or public centres recently or in the past. Those interviewees who had been successfully treated for drug addiction underlined the importance of small, community-based centres with a people-centred approach. Three of our interviewees said they had relapsed multiple times, including after going through rough and often inhuman treatment in government-run treatment centres.

In the words of drug users

One of the interviewees who struggled with relapses over the years, but was eventually successfully treated in 2017 is Reza from Balkh, whose words began this report. He ascribed his success partly to the support of family and friends, especially his wife and mother, but largely to the efforts of a small NGO, Aramesh:

I didn’t believe I could be treated. … My mother and wife persuaded me to go. They even cried and said, “Please, for God’s sake, go and see yourself. Many people have received treatment and you might too. Think about yourself and about us. You can’t live this way anymore and you have brought us trouble.” I couldn’t bear to see my mother and wife crying. They hadn’t done before. I think they had really lost their patience. So, I went to the private treatment centre, Aramesh. When I went there, I found it was really different from the treatment centres in Iran. 

They had the same method as the centre for motadan-e gomnam [Narcotics Anonymous]. They held many meetings with drug users and gave them books to read – if they could [read]. Many drug users who’ve been successful in quitting [still] attend these meetings. I myself attended many meetings. They got me to understand that I was sick. They got me to believe that I was the only person who could decide and that I could help myself and my family and quit using drugs. … I’ve been clean for around seven years now.

35-year-old Muhammad who lives in Sar-e Pul province was also helped by Aramesh, in 2017 and has not used drugs since. He was born in Iran, but after he returned to Afghanistan in 2004, he started using opium.

I got a job as a teacher. I worked there for two years and became friends with a few people who were using opium. I thought I could use it too, so I began using it and enjoyed it. I was not using much at the beginning – once in two or three months. Then, I fell in love with a girl in the area. I sent my family to her home to ask her parents to let me marry their daughter. They agreed. I was happy. I got married, but my wife and the rest of the family didn’t know I was using opium. 

Soon, he said, he began using opium more regularly. He got fired after the school principal discovered he was a drug user. He found another job at an office but left it after six months. In 2016, his family found out about his drug use and sent him to a government-run centre, but he relapsed. He eventually found Aramesh through a friend who had used to take drugs:

He gave my brother the centre’s card and told him to take me there. He told my brother it was the only centre that could help me. I went there with my wife and stayed for 72 days. My life, my mind and my thoughts changed while I was there. They helped me understand I was sick and that I could get better if I could muster the will to quit. I attended many meetings. I’ve been clean for around seven and a half years now. I have a job and I have my family. I kept my wife from leaving me and I have a happy life.

Another positive account, again via a Narcotics Anonymous programme, was given by 38-year-old Khalid from Mazar-e Sharif. He had been a user of various drugs for 12 years, he said, but had now been clean for five years and six months.

When I was very young, I was looking for fleeting pleasures and that is why I started using opium. Gradually, I began to use heroin and then crystal meth. I used drugs for 12 years. I lost everything. I lost my job. I tried several times to quit, but every time I could remain clean for a week or two and then I began using drugs again. Finally, I got to know about Narcotics Anonymous, where I went for detoxification and attended several meetings helping people withdraw from drugs. I’m still in touch with them and still attend meetings, after finding out that they hold them outside the centre as well. I began to read books with other attendees. They helped me overcome my addiction.

Karim, a high school graduate living in Kabul, said he had used drugs for seven years. He used to spend most of his time in Shahr-e Naw Park but described how lucky he was that his family had allowed him to come home at night. He managed to stop using drugs, he said, after a good friend encouraged him to seek help in a treatment centre:

I went to the treatment centre in Jangalak [a neighbourhood in east Kabul] in 2022 and I was there for 45 days. My friend was working there. Quitting drugs is really difficult, but if you’re determined, you can do it. I thank God, and then my friend, who helped me stop using drugs. I have been clean for a year and a few months. … 

The situation in Janglak treatment centre is not that proper. I mean it’s not as good as it should be. They don’t provide services for drug users. When I had the desire to use drugs [waqt-e ke khumar meshodam], they got me to take a cold bath. Sometimes, they gave me pills to get rid of the pain. I am happy now to have received treatment and recovered.

Dost Muhammed from Mazar-e Sharif was a drug user for 15 years. He relapsed several times and lost his reputation and wealth during those years. Seven months ago, the IEA counter-narcotics department came to his shop:

They took me to a camp by force. I was in the camp for three months. The situation in the camp was terrible because there were many drug users in one hall. There were beatings and cold-water baths. They didn’t give us enough food and there was no medicine.

He said he thought to himself that in order to get out of his situation and regain his family’s trust, he had to quit using drugs. He was helped, he said, after leaving the camp by Narcotics Anonymous. “Fortunately, I managed to succeed,” he said. “I’m clean. I have my shop and can work. My family and the society trust me.”

Another drug user from Kabul, Sharif Wahidi, told AAN about how both he and his brother had been using cannabis for several decades, but scarcity of cannabis under the Emirate, which had driven the price up, had made it unaffordable and they had stopped or substantially reduced their use of it.

I’ve been using cannabis for more than 20 years. … I used to smoke cannabis three or four times a day as it was cheap and easily available. Now, the Emirate is really serious in dealing with drug users. Cannabis is still available, but it’s too expensive. A small amount of cannabis costs 3,500 afghanis [USD 49], so I can’t smoke often. I can use it only once every night, but a very small amount. I’m trying to quit it forever and hope I can make it. 

Sharif said his brother had quit smoking cannabis after 40 years of using it.

He has become very depressed and prefers to be alone. He stays far from his family in his small garden. I think the reason my brother got depressed is the fact that he quit using drugs all at once. He should have stopped gradually. I don’t want to face the same problem, so I will stop slowly. 

One of our interviewees was still struggling with drugs. 28-year-old Turab Jaffari said he had been taking drugs for more than 10 years. The police took him by force to a treatment centre in April 2022,[14] but once he got out, he said, he relapsed:

I was under a bridge in Ghazni city when the Taleban police arrested me and forced me to go to a camp. I didn’t want to stop using drugs. I was there for two months. There were a lot of problems: too many drug users and no doctor. They provided us with little food and forced us to take cold showers. I didn’t have access to drugs there. After two months, they let me leave. Once I got out, I returned to the same area, under the bridge and resumed using drugs. I have nowhere to go. My parents and sisters are in Iran. A brother of mine is living here in Ghazni, but he doesn’t allow me to stay in his home. 

He says that he cannot quit without help from family and friends:

I have no job and no one to support me, so I can’t quit drugs. I have been using drugs for more than ten years. Now I go to different places so the Taleban won’t arrest me again. I go under the bridge with some other users, and when one of us notices the Taleban coming, we escape and go to another area. 

Sharif, the cannabis smoker in Kabul, also reported that there, much of the problem had gone out of the public sight. He used to see drug users in his neighbourhood, he said, but the government had rounded them up and there were no longer many on the street. However, he said, it cannot control what people do at home.

There are many others who use drugs in their homes where the government doesn’t have control. Many young boys aged 15 to 16 use cannabis and cheap tablets such as zeegap or pregabalin [a medical drug used to treat anxiety, epilepsy, nerve pain and help support opioid withdrawal]. There are others who use tablet K, but it’s also expensive, so young boys can’t afford it. They buy pregabalin instead.

To sum it up

There are many reasons why drug use has become such a major problem in Afghanistan: traditional use of opium as pain relief medication; increasing contact with opiates (eg as cultivation, processing and trafficking all grew in volume); lack of public awareness of the harms done by drugs; and the need to treat trauma and mental health problems caused by forty years of wars and uncertainty.

War, over the 40 years, proved fertile ground for an illicit opium industry to flourish. During the Republic, the insurgency and counterinsurgency led to instability and corruption facilitated the expansion of drug cultivation and trade. The large-scale poppy fields no may longer exist, but stocks of opium paste are not yet run down. Even if opium and its derivatives become less easily available, as is evident from our interviews, drug users will switch, if their preferred drug is not available and demand from the enormous number of existing drug users will also continue to drive supplies. This is a big market and a business opportunity that some will not miss.

Given the diminished production of opiates in Afghanistan, we might witness an increase in synthetic drugs, like meth and tablet K. When it comes to meth, the IEA has made noticeable efforts to curb large-scale meth production (see this 2023 Alcis analysis), but small-scale meth production facilities are not so easy to detect. We might also see an increase in the use of prescription drugs, such as Valium, barbiturates and phenobarbital, as long as the sale of drugs over the counter remains unregulated and control is lax.

As to trying to reduce demand for drugs, neither the Emirate nor the Republic have had much success in dealing with Afghanistan’s massive drug use problem, as is evident from our report. Both administrations have favoured large treatment centres at the expense of the network of NGO-led and donor-supported community treatment centres, which have been largely unsupported and unappreciated by the government. Despite a multitude of evidence from the last 20 years that small treatment centres and the support of family and friends are crucial for users successfully coming off drugs, it seems that all Afghan governments think that the mass treatment facilities are a ‘silver bullet’ for the problem. All our interviews show that dedicated, gentle and personalised care has long-term positive effects, while rough and depersonalised treatment tends to lead to relapse.

Edited by Roxanna Shapour and Kate Clark

References

References
↑1 The 2009 UNODC Drug Use Survey, based on interviews with 2,614 male Afghan drug users, found that 40 per cent of men in the sample began using opium when they were  in Iran.
↑2 See page 7 of the Afghanistan National Drug Use Survey for the methodology used.
↑3 The test survey suggested opium to be the most commonly opioid used, but, for example, among urban women, the most common drug used was the opioid codeine, a product sold as a pharmaceutical to treat pain in combination with other medications such as paracetamol. Cough syrup may also include it.
↑4 The name, tablet K derives from the Russian word for this pill, tabletka.
↑5 On 5 April 2022, the Amir issued a decree (#31) that: 

[C]ultivating opium poppy in Afghanistan is completely forbidden. From this time onwards, no one should cultivate poppies on their land. Anyone who plants them, their crops will be destroyed and they themselves will face Sharia procedures.

Likewise, using, transporting, selling, trading, importing and exporting of all types of drugs, such as alcohol, heroin, shisha [methamphetamine], tablet K [a ‘dirty cocktail of methamphetamine, opium and MDMA, aka ecstasy], hashish and all other types of drugs, as well as drug-producing plants, is forbidden.

A translation of the order can be read in the AAN publication, ‘Decrees, Orders and Instructions of His Excellency, Amir Al-Mu’minin, as published in the Official Gazette on 22 May 2023 (31), p41.

The IEA enforced the ban on cultivating opium from autumn 2022 onwards. It has still to stop trade in opium paste and other opiates, according to the UNODC and David Mansfield and Alcis. See AAN’s 15 November 2023 report, ‘Prosperity or Penury: The political and economic fallout of the opium ban in Afghanistan’.
↑6 A translation of the order can be read in the AAN publication, ‘Decrees, Orders and Instructions of His Excellency, Amir Al-Mu’minin, as published in the Official Gazette on 22 May 2023’, (#2234), p87.
↑7 The new national survey on drug use in Afghanistan is a joint effort by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and commenced in June 2022.
↑8 There have been some figures reported in the last few years: they point to higher figures since 2015.  Afghanistan’s problems with drug use may have worsened since the last survey was conducted. In February 2023, ToloNews, without providing a source, reported the number of drug users to be estimated as between three and five million. In March 2022, acting deputy Prime Minister Mullah Abdul Salaam Hanafi, in a meeting with a delegation from the International Rescue Committee (IRC), said one million women and children were using drugs nationwide.
↑9 The then Executive Director of UNODC, Antonio Maria Costa, wrote in the preface of the 2009 Drug User Survey: 

Only ten percent of drug users surveyed had received a form of drug treatment, although 90% of them felt that they were in need of it. This leaves around 700,000 Afghans with no access to drug treatment ‐ and another generation on the way.
↑10 The report details how the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) spent over 50 million dollars between January 2013 and April 2018 on 41 drug treatment projects, which were implemented by the intergovernmental Asia-Pacific regional organisation, the Colombo Plan and UNODC.
↑11  BBC Persian quoted Deputy Minister of Interior for Counter-Narcotics Abdul Haq Hamkar, saying: “Information obtained from investigating drug users provided good clues to discover, identify and arrest people in the drug distribution network.”
↑12 See these two video footages by the Spanish news agency EFE here and by Al Jazeera here. Both are from 2023.
↑13 During the Republic, the MoPH also had a policy for the community-based services for treatment of drug users (the report is undated, but refers to 2012-2016 sources). The purpose of this policy was to gradually lessen the institutional isolation of individuals with addiction while providing services to the necessary population where they live and work. The policy had different phases, such as the pre-treatment phase (3-4 months), primary treatment phase (45 days) and aftercare and rehabilitation phase, consisting of a follow-up phase (intensive up to 90 days) and then follow-up for one year with relapse prevention. A doctor from one of the treatment centres in Kabul said that the policy was for the entire country, but it was implemented incompletely in some places in government hospitals. For example, in Janglak treatment centre for drug users, said, “In Janglak treatment centre, we had community-based services for addicts. Addicts who were not able to come to the centre were in bed in their homes and psychotherapies and social counselling were presented to them in their homes.”
↑14 For an illustration of what ‘under the bridge’ looked like, see this Al Jazeera photo essay from 2022.

Treating Drug Users in Afghanistan: How to respond to a massive problem? 
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