Opium Nation Read online

  I find my voice again. “Well, thank you all very much. I hope to see you again.” I pretend to be courageous as I walk toward Adeeb. The men continue to stare, mumbling words I cannot decipher, perhaps in the Uzbeki language, but they let me through the circle. Adeeb and I walk back to the van, looking over our shoulders occasionally as we walk.

  Once we’re inside the van, Adeeb reverses it all the way to the main road and drives faster than the rocky road can handle.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, looking him in the eye. “I should’ve listened to you.”

  “We’re alive, and that’s all that matters. God was with us,” he says in a calm tone. He avoids my eyes, perhaps because it can be considered flirtatious to look a woman in the eye or perhaps because he’s too upset.

  “I just hope you got what you wanted,” he says pointedly.

  “Some of it,” I reply, admiring the magenta poppy flowers that grow as far as the eye can see.

  We arrive in Faizabad in a much shorter time than it took us to get to Argu.

  Badakhshan was an important path on the Silk Road, and poppy and opium have been part of its history for centuries. Alexander the Great and Marco Polo both traveled through this enchanting landscape, and the armies of Alexander the Great tried to conquer Badakhshan in 250 bc. In their temporary reign over the region, the Greeks, with the aid of local natives, built many forts and towns here, some of which are still standing. Some of Alexander’s soldiers settled here, and Afghans in the Wakhan and Pyanj valleys in this province are Greek descendants. In the thirteenth century, Italian explorer Marco Polo found gemstones such as lapis, rubies, and emeralds, still some of the province’s hidden resources. The Pamir and Hindu Kush mountain ranges contribute to the area’s natural splendor; the melting snow from the ranges in the spring and summer flows into the Kokcha and Amu rivers, the latter formerly known as the Oxus. Hawaiian waterfalls pale next to the cascades I’ve seen traveling through the province. The population here is sparse in relation to the province’s size—823,000 people spread over 44,000 square kilometers—partly because arable land is scarce and weather conditions are harsh. The majority of the population is composed of Farsi-speaking Tajiks, but there are several smaller groups with their own languages, including Uzbeks and Ismailis, a Shia sect active in reconstruction efforts. The mass production of opium here began during the 1980s, when the province was on the front line in the war against the Soviet Union.

  Burhanuddin Rabbani, one of the influential leaders of the mujahideen, came from Badakhshan and helped encourage poppy farming to bankroll the insurgency against the Soviets. Rabbani served as president in the 1990s, during the mujahideen’s rule in Kabul, when civil war raged and the country’s capital was destroyed. Badakhshan’s primary border is with Tajikistan, a former Soviet republic; the mountain hideouts there made it a convenient location for the Soviet military. Its capital, Faizabad, became a Soviet garrison town until the Red Army pulled out in 1989. Rabbani kept his base in Badakhshan and, along with other mujahideen, looted the mineral and gem mines and sold his treasure to smugglers in Pakistan and abroad.

  Once the Taliban gained control, the mujahideen were pushed farther north, and many of them took refuge in Panjshir and Badakhshan. Rabbani returned to his province, but he has few supporters left. “He didn’t do anything, except build one bridge connecting the old Faizabad to the new part of town,” one of the town’s nurses tells me. Rabbani’s wooden bridge is now falling apart.

  From 1992 to 2001, when the mujahideen commanders exercised absolute control, poppy cultivation rose by 43 percent. The Taliban did not occupy any part of this province at any point, and when they banned poppy in 2000, Badakhshan produced the entire 185 tons accounted for in all of Afghanistan. The people here, as in most of the country, rejoiced when the U.S. bombing campaign began in October 2001.

  “They abandoned us and now they were coming back to save us,” a teacher with blue eyes and a white turban says. Afghans felt this sense of abandonment after the United States pulled its resources and allowed the mujahideen to terrorize the country with their American stockpile of weapons. The Cold War propaganda spread by the United States was etched in Afghan hearts and minds—the Soviets were evil infidels and the Americans were kind Christians who helped Muslims—until the civil war in 1992. Then a sense of betrayal prevailed, as Afghanistan became the United States’ jilted lover.

  Afghans chose to forgive and forget their pains after 2001, but they unrealistically expected rapid change and reform. When the mujahideen reclaimed their positions of power, Afghans once again realized that no one was coming to their rescue.

  In the summer of 2004, during my visit to Badakhshan, that sense of hope for change is still prevalent, despite the small skirmishes between the mujahideen factions and drug dealers that are the destabilizing threats against security. I travel day and night on the precarious roads, and the people there—with the exception of those at the opium bazaar—welcome me with warmth.

  The faces of Badakhshan’s residents mirror the natural wonders of the place. Green and blue eyes with coal black hair and honey-colored skin are typical. Badakhshi smiles are not jaded, like the smiles flashed in the big cities; no hidden intentions conceal the friendliness. People show what they are inside—poor but kind. The ongoing wars have not hardened these people’s hearts or compromised their humanity. Here, I come across coeducational elementary schools for the first time: boys and girls huddled in tents studying intensely. I meet some of the most inspiring Afghans: a fifteen-year-old girl who lives in a small khishlaq, a village constructed on the edge of mountains, who walks downhill in a burqa two hours every day to reach her school. Then she walks uphill for three hours to get home and prepare lunch. After lunch, she gathers her mother and a group of illiterate village women to teach them what she has learned in class. I meet a family of four young women, nurses and students, who lost their parents and who now live without any men to protect them. They spend their days caring for the sick in the town hospital. The most controversial person I get to know is a man, Haji Barat, revered by residents in Faizabad. Although he is, of all things, a drug smuggler, he spends some of his profits from smuggling to provide basic services such as health care to Badakhshis.

  Yet Badakhshan’s economic dependence on an illegal crop offers a dismal future. The only other income people have is remittances from relatives working in Pakistan, Iran, or Tajikistan. Opium has temporarily improved the lives of some families, but the majority suffer from its side effects, mainly debilitating addiction. Furthermore, people in Faizabad tell me that opium is actually a currency in some districts of the province. Newspaper reports, such as an Associated Press article from the Shahran district, corroborate this: “When children felt like buying candy, they ran into their father’s fields and returned with a few grams of opium folded inside a leaf. Their mothers collected it in plastic bags, trading 18 grams for a meter of fabric or two liters of cooking oil. Even a visit to the barbershop could be settled in opium.”

  Badakhshan, similar to Nangarhar in the east and Helmand in the south, is a factory for opium—here the drug is grown, consumed, sold, and refined into heroin and other opiate-based drugs. The province has the largest share of opium addicts in the country, twenty thousand, or 2.5 percent of the population. The addicted include a large number of women and children. Mothers smoke the opium in pipes, then blow the smoke into their children’s mouths. They say it relieves their pain. Badakhshan also houses the second largest number of heroin laboratories in the country, anywhere from fourteen to eighty, according to the United Nations. But Russian authorities say there may be as many as four hundred makeshift labs across its Tajikistan border. Labs can be mobile, depending on how much opium they’re capable of refining. They are situated in mountain caves or on any compound with a couple of rooms, close to border crossings or in isolated locations. The instruments chemists use to refine opium include metal drums, wood-fired stoves, and iron levers such as car jacks. In th
e past, the majority of opium was smuggled to Iran, Pakistan, and especially Turkey for refinement, but the United Nations reports that two-thirds of Afghan opium is now processed domestically. Experienced foreign chemists come to Afghanistan to help Afghans refine large quantities of the drug.

  The moral question of opium being forbidden by any authority, be it a religious cleric or the government, seems to be extraneous to the people here. Despite its negative effects, opium guarantees their survival, however short-lived. Few judge the farmers or smugglers who engage in the trade. Some of them, such as Haji Barat, have become role models who have done more to aid Faizabad’s residents than any NGO or government agency. “I read about this man named Pablo Escobar from Colombia and how he helped poor people in his city with drug money,” one of the NGO workers I talk to says. “Haji Barat is our Pablo Escobar.”

  I hear of Haji Barat the first day I arrive in Badakhshan. People speak of him with admiration. He is a rare Good Samaritan who has built a health clinic with fifty beds; he plans to open a factory, too. Barat is one of the richest men in this province, and it’s known around town that his fortune was made from opium money. Yet people are quick to point out that he has a number of fronts, including his currency trade and a business that imports cooking gas from Uzbekistan.

  Adeeb happily drives me to Barat’s house. “I’m glad to hear you want to visit this man. He’s a good man, not like the thugs in the opium market,” Adeeb explains.

  “But he’s also dealing drugs,” I argue. “So what if he uses it for a good cause? It’s dirty money.”

  “I thought you told me not to be moralistic about opium. You’re confusing me,” he complains.

  I laugh. “I’m just presenting the other side. It’s good to practice debating with yourself. Have you tried it?”

  “Only with personal decisions, not these things,” Adeeb replies. “I think you don’t know what you think. Why do you make yourself so dizzy with such matters? You are not fully Afghan and not fully American. So you’re always confused. You should just accept that,” he philosophizes.

  He has stepped over his brotherly boundaries. I’m deeply hurt and taken aback. Adeeb has touched a sensitive nerve in me, pointing out my fragile Afghan identity. I become defensive and irritable.

  “I’m not confused all the time. I love this country probably more than you do and am just as Afghan as you are—but in a different way. Being Afghan is not one thing, you know. You can’t tell people what their identity is. They should decide for themselves.” I say these words quietly, though, without much confidence.

  “I didn’t mean to offend you. I’m sorry, khwarak.”

  We reach Barat’s house, which is situated on a tree-lined street in the new city of Faizabad. It’s the biggest house on the block, with marble floors, Persian carpets, and an SUV parked in the garage. Barat greets us himself—considering he is wealthy, I had expected servants at the door. He is a striking man of thirty-seven years with icy blue eyes, a neatly trimmed beard, and a firm handshake.

  He is willing to talk, but there is an implicit understanding that he will not divulge the secrets of the drug trade or his involvement in it, just like Haji Sardar in Herat.

  “I wanted to discuss the condition of Badakhshan and its issues because you’re a leader in this community, and a merchant who has money to spend,” I tell him with a big grin.

  “Of course. I’d be honored to speak with you.” He smiles back and gestures to us to enter his home. Haji Barat has other male guests sitting across the room from us, but he tries to stay focused on my questions, answering in educated Farsi, a badge of his formal schooling.

  “I was a mujahid and fought against the Soviet invasion for fourteen years,” he begins. “I finished high school, then enlisted with the guerrilla faction of Ahmad Shah Massoud, the commander who al Qaeda and the Taliban killed two days before September eleventh. I was considered a hero not too long ago, but now the Americans call me a warlord. The Americans used us then for their proxy war and they’re doing the same now, but we’ve caught on. We want our freedom and we no longer want to be anybody’s servants.” This long-winded answer to “Tell me about yourself” reveals his deep anger at the mujahideen’s loss of public prestige.

  “But the people do not call you a warlord,” I say. “They call you a hero still.” It is easy to be charmed by his good looks and Robin Hood reputation.

  “You’ve been speaking to friends. I have more enemies than friends,” he explains.

  He tells me he has a wife and five children.

  “Rich men normally indulge in more than one wife,” I say, goading him.

  “I think one wife is enough trouble.” He furrows his brow, then smiles. “I want to be a role model for my children. I want them to do good and be servants to their country.”

  When I finally broach the topic of opium, he looks at his guests again. He’s not comfortable talking about this issue in front of them, but we continue the conversation anyway. “People hate opium here. Poppy will disappear if there are alternatives. They accuse me of being a smuggler because I’ve made money through other means and my rivals have not. People turned to poppy here because an international mafia, including Russians, Tajikis, and Pakistanis found a footing here. And now all those in power are in bed with the mafia,” he says condemningly.

  “Aren’t you one of those in power?”

  “If you’re accusing me of smuggling, I don’t need to. I did when the Taliban were in power, out of desperation. But now I trade and travel. I sell sugar and buy cars to resell and am doing well, Mashallah.”

  “What made you build a clinic and help people here?”

  “God. He is in my conscience, and I’m on this earth to serve Him and make His wishes come true. People in Badakhshan are in dire need of health care and food, basic services you take for granted. A better question is how could I not help them if I have the money?”

  Conscientious smugglers such as Barat are precious gems among drug traffickers and kingpins. He is far from the notorious Pablo Escobar, who aided poor people in his native Medellin but also killed and terrorized thousands of others before he was assassinated. It’s impossible to know how many people Barat has abused, killed, or terrorized, if any, but the people I talk to in Faizabad see this drug lord as their only hero.

  From the 1990s to 2004, the opium economy changed the lives of thousands in Badakhshan for the better. The locals call the period the Opium Festival. Adam Pain writes about the province in the report “Afghanistan Livelihood Trajectories” for the think tank Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit:

  For most households, this expansion was a time of unparalleled prosperity. . . . It brought income either directly from cultivation on owned or sharecropped land or indirectly by providing new employment opportunities. It was a time of food security, investment and debt relief, and many households were able to recover from debts incurred during the drought.

  After my visit to Badakhshan, profits from the opium economy drop rapidly. The “festival” ends with bad weather conditions, successful government eradication programs in some districts, and rising wheat prices. Some of the farmers believe mistakenly that the government will compensate them for their eradicated crops, as the British did. They voluntarily destroy their crops to receive cash but are disappointed when the government informs them that the previous strategy of cash for eradication has been abolished. Farmers abandon poppy and again grow traditional crops such as wheat. The decline in opium profits causes a drop in farm labor, wages, and purchasing power. The quality of life for those who depended on poppy money deteriorates so much that some Badakhshis do not have enough to eat. I hope that innovative farmers such as Parween, who used poppy cash to find other work, no longer need poppy profits to live well.

  Chapter Eleven

  My Mother’s Kabul

  Sayed Begum Nawa—better known as Nafasgul to family and friends, and Madar to me—slowly steps off the Ariana Afghan Airlines plane at Kabul I
nternational Airport, clasping the railing of the stairway so she will not fall. Her two-inch beige heels click on the tarmac. She clutches her matching gold-rimmed beige purse and wipes off imaginary dust from her beige-and-brown skirt. Then she fidgets with her matching embroidered gaach (silk) head scarf. One side is draped over her shoulder; the other falls over her bosom. Her appearance to her liking, she stops to notice the sight before her.

  It’s a hot, dry, dust-filled day. The August sun stings her eyes and blocks her view. She holds her free hand over her eyes to filter out the sun and see as far as she can the country she has missed for twenty-two years. Jagged mountains loom over the capital, a valley home to nearly four million people. But the mountains are the only familiar sight. Kabul has changed, is barely recognizable to my mother, who lived here with my father and his siblings in the 1960s.

  Her heart sinks as she looks around, and she begins to cry quietly. The airport is in shambles. Kabul, which was home to only half a million residents when she lived here, now houses so many people, all strangers. They look disheveled and poor, with greasy hair and tattered shoes. Furthermore, when they speak they do not sound like native Kabulis, as they’re from the provinces, with village accents in Farsi and Pashto.

  The last time my mother visited Kabul before we left the country was in 1982, when my family was planning our escape. She traveled from Herat to the capital to get an Indian visa, but then we decided to leave through Iran and Pakistan. Twenty-three years ago, Kabul was clean; the buildings were intact; there was electricity, greenery, water; and the people were lux (classy). There were few pirahan tombans and turbans. Most people wore suits, dresses, and other styles of Western clothes.