The Taliban police seem to have a new enemy in Kabul: drug addicts.
Rounded up or entrusted by their families, they find themselves in a rehabilitation center for 45 days of forced weaning.
Their cache is known to all.
At Pul-e-Sukhta, the bridge under which the city spits out its wastewater, drug addicts in Kabul live and die out of sight.
But this presence is intolerable for the new Taliban police, which is increasing the number of mass arrests.
Proof of this new policy, two combatants, armed with M16s and AK47s were sent this Monday morning to shake the amorphous figures in the middle of a pile of cushions, blankets, sandbags, syringes or pipes. crack.
10% of the population affected by drugs
After a few warning shots, the drug addicts were pushed unceremoniously in ambulances, heading to the rehabilitation service of Ibn Sina hospital, installed in a former military base.
The director of the center, Dr Ahmad Zoher Sultani, can accommodate a thousand patients.
And there he empties the sea of the national scourge with a teaspoon.
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"Drugs are a terrible problem in our country, there are nearly four million drug addicts", explains the doctor to AFP.
About ten percent of the Afghan population is struggling with drugs, a world record confirmed by international surveys.
“This is the policy of the Islamic Emirate, they stop more.
They want to cleanse the city of those who make it ugly.
So as soon as we have places, they will look for them.
Today, almost all of our 1,000 beds are occupied, ”he adds.
“At the moment, we are working for free, no one has been paid for four months.
We hope things work out ”.
The “Rehabilitation” stay lasts 45 days and is more like a weaning during which the men spend their days lying on their beds, in dormitories, or squatting in the courtyards to benefit from the rays of the autumn sun.
While there is some methadone for opium addicts, there is nothing for methamphetamine users, says Dr Sultani.
Looting attempts
Among the new residents, Emal, a 36-year-old father, currently unemployed, made his entry.
This is the fourth time that he has come to this center.
He was released only 10 days ago from his previous hospitalization, due to his methamphetamine addiction.
Thin and fearful 22-year-old Bilal Ahmad also entered the center.
He also said he was addicted to "meth" and went through the program "a year ago, or a year and a half".
"I'm happy to be here," he assures AFP, throwing around him glances that say the opposite.
"In 45 days, God willing, we can go home."
Once the thorough search is over, the new arrivals are led, in groups of six, into the tiled shower building, where they are given khaki outfits, a scoop of shampoo, but no towel.
Their hair is then shaved, but not their beards.
Then towards the dormitories, where two nurses take their blood pressure, pulse and temperature.
Some will go in rooms with five beds, others share a room with 30.
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The center offers three meals a day to its residents and has a year of food reserves, assures Dr. Sultani.
“We are in a poor neighborhood,” he says.
“On August 15, the day Kabul fell to the Taliban, hundreds of people gathered at our doors to loot us.
But we resisted, along with our patients.
And we pushed them back ”.