- No more opium, no more money for Afghan villagers, By Rukmini Callimachi (AP), August 3, 2009, Washington Post: “For as long as anyone can remember, there was no need for paper money in this remote corner of the Hindu Kush. The common currency was what grew in everyone’s backyard – opium. 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. But the economy of this village sputtered to a halt last year when the government began aggressively enforcing a ban on opium production. Villagers were not allowed to plant their only cash crop. Now shops are empty and farmers are in debt, as entire communities spiral into poverty…”
- Opium takes over entire Afghan families, villages, By Rukmini Callimachi (AP), August 10, 2009, Washington Post: “Open the door to Islam Beg’s house and the thick opium smoke rushes out into the cold mountain air, like steam from a bathhouse. It’s just past 8 a.m. and the family of six – including a 1-year-old baby boy – is already curled up at the lip of the opium pipe. Beg, 65, breathes in and exhales a cloud of smoke. He passes the pipe to his wife. She passes it to their daughter. The daughter blows the opium smoke into the baby’s tiny mouth. The baby’s eyes roll back into his head. Their faces are gaunt. Their hair is matted. They smell. In dozens of mountain hamlets in this remote corner of Afghanistan, opium addiction has become so entrenched that whole families – from toddlers to old men – are addicts. Cut off from the rest of the world by glacial streams, the addiction moves from house to house, infecting entire communities. From just one family years ago, at least half the people of Sarab, population 1,850, are now addicts…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty