The Taliban fundamentalist movement announced Friday that more than 10,000 drug addicts have been transferred in the last three days to medical centers in 32 provinces of the country to undergo a detoxification process in the face of alarm among some doctors in the country because of the violence that the group usually exercises during treatment.
This decision is part of a long-term strategy, according to the Taliban, to address the needs of the affected population in a country where between 2.5 and 3.5 million people are addicted to drugs, according to a report published in 2015 by the deposed Afghan government.
The measure, announced Friday by the Deputy Minister of Anti-Narcotics, Habibullah Ahmadi, was confirmed by Taliban spokesman Mohamed Naim on his Twitter account.
The fight against drugs was one of the first social measures adopted by the new Afghan regime after its reconquest of the country in August 2021. Taliban leader Hibatullah Ajunzadah decreed in March last year a ban on the cultivation of opium poppy and the extraction of opium from it, as well as the use of alcohol and narcotics throughout the country with immediate effect.
However, many drug addicts have accused the Taliban of resorting to violence in these «treatments», which usually take place in the country’s prisons due to the closure of specialized treatment centers due to the lack of international aid.
Afghan doctors consulted by Radio Azadi, the Afghan affiliate of the American international public broadcaster, denounce that those imprisoned do not have access to medicines in a process they describe as a «forced detoxification», with the serious danger to their health that this entails.
«The addict is simply hospitalized as a prisoner,» according to physician Hamed Elmi, «without the necessary medication and without the necessary counseling that would allow him to reduce his stay in prison.»
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
