Mar
31
The situation in Pakistan: far from poppy free
March 31, 2008 | | Leave a Comment
By Violet
Many Afghanistan refugees refused to leave Pakistan and return to their home county, so does the opium that are growing near the border and the trafficking of drugs.
Opium production in Afghanistan is at an all-time high, particularly near the Pakistan border, according to the International Narcotics Control Strategy Report 2008 released by the U.S. Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs [INL] in March this year.
The report said that since poppy cultivation continued to rise in Afghanistan, Pakistan remained a significant transit country of
heroin, morphine, opium, and hashish, and is a conduit to Iran, the Arabian Peninsula, East Asia, and Africa by land and sea.
Pakistan’s position as a major drug transit country has fueled domestic addiction, the U.S. INL said in the report, especially in
areas of poor economic opportunity and physical isolation. The GOP estimates that they have two to three million drug addicts in the total population of 162 million, although no accurate figure exists.
However, as the drug comes from Afghanistan, most of the addicted drug users are also from the neighboring Afghanistan.
According to a IRIN (Integrated Regional Information Networks) report at the end of March, many of the 1.5 million Afghans dotted around Pakistan’s urban centers have faced prolonged hardship and are vulnerable to drug addiction. Many have no jobs, or work as the lowest paid members of the workforce.
These people’s situation and vulnerability is no different from their countrymen back in the homeland.
