Opium addiction ravages Afghan families

Selling daughters, leasing sons
After selling their land, some families resort to even more desperate measures. They take loans from the shopkeepers who sell them drugs. Then they sell their daughters, known as 'opium brides,' to settle the debt. They lease their sons.

"I know he is angry with me. But what can I do? I have nothing left to sell," says Jan Begum, who has sent her 14-year-old to do construction work for the drug dealers. "I tried to stop, but I can't. Whenever I do, the pain becomes unbearable."

The problem is compounded by Afghanistan's neighbors. Iran immediately to the west has the world's highest per capita heroin use. The heroin labs there, as well as in Pakistan to the east, use opium imported from Afghanistan. These countries are now exporting heroin addiction back to Afghanistan in the form of returning refugees.

Like opium, heroin in Afghanistan is biting off whole families. Gul Pari, 13, watched her mother get high on heroin when she and her brother were in elementary school. Now she lies in a bed in a drug treatment center for women in Kabul. Her 15-year-old brother Zaihar is across town in a rehab facility for men.

Their bodies are like brittle sticks. The 13-year-old tries to push herself up on one elbow, but her thin arm cannot hold her up, so she falls back onto the pillow. Her emaciated brother leans against a wall to steady himself.

What will happen when they go home is unknown. They live with their mother — a recovering heroin addict — under a tarp in the yard of an abandoned house.

Julie Jacobson / ASSOCIATED PRESS Sarab village resident and opium addict Jan Begum smokes opium in the Badakhshan province of Afghanistan. "This helps with my asthma," said Begum who has no money or transportation to travel to a doctor or clinic.

Mohammad Asef, a health worker at the clinic taking care of Zaihar Pari, says he is worried about the boy's chances of recovering. "In America people go and get high in the park. In Afghanistan, they do it in the home," says Asef. "They bring it inside. They burn it on the family stove. Everyone sees. So everyone is affected."

In Sarab, villagers who are not addicted keep their distance from those who are. They don't invite them into their homes. They discourage them from coming to village meetings. It's as if they are trying to quarantine themselves.

Beg says that for him all hope is lost. Even after he is buried, it'll take 70 years for the opium to ooze out of his bones. His hope, he says, are his grandkids — the only people in the family who are not yet addicts.

As Beg is getting high on a recent morning, the 1-year-old crawls over and starts playing with the opium pipe. He picks it up and shakes it, as if it were a rattle. Then, imitating his grandfather, he raises the pipe to his mouth.

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