Category: Uncategorized

By Sherry Rehman Thursday, August 13, 2009

Gojra has exposed fundamental fissures in the crafting of a national identity in Pakistan. We all now know that large mobs of ordinary Pakistanis, with police impunity, went on a rampage of communalist frenzy to kill eight people and injure many more. What also died at Gojra was a sense of fundamental entitlement of citizenship in the hearts and minds of the embattled Christian and non-Muslim communities. To many of us incidents such as Gojra and Sangla signal more than a failure of policing or minority protections built into our fragile social contract. All nation-states, to some extent, have contested formulations of what they stand for. That is an integral part of democracy’s most famous accommodation of competing interests in the form of pluralism. But at the heart of Pakistan’s continuing crisis of trust in democratic politics, its relationship with the military, its foreign policy, its notion of sovereignty, its inability to live by constitutional contract and to apply universal norms of justice, lies a fragmented state identity.

This is no abstract notion. It affects how citizenship has been defined in collusion with Islamists, who in contrast to the average South Asian Muslim, opposed the creation of Pakistan. When a state defines its minorities as a vilified ‘other’ through the edifice of its laws, it allows more space to the ideologues who have successfully gained space since 1947 as the upholders of a muscular, dogmatic and exclusivist state discourse on religion. Quite apart from challenging the project of a country forged for South Asian Muslims, as distinct from a Sunni-majoritarian theocracy, these Islamists have also chosen to ignore a large body of exegesis, Hadith and Muslim history that is replete with religious direction for respect for another’s religion. The politics of this religiosity ignores Islam’s core tenet of tolerance. Any government that takes on the project of amending these exploitative laws will have to confront this political Islamist lobby to remind all concerned that in Islam the idea of justice is seen as the highest moral path to practical proximity to God. As for minorities specifically, the government can exhort detractors by iterating the words and deeds of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) when he says: “Beware! If anyone dare oppress a member of a minority or has usurped his or her rights, or tortured, or tool away something forcibly, I will fight on behalf of the minority against the Muslim on the day of Judgement.” (Sunaan–I–Abu Dawood)

The good news is that the Gojra tragedy has forced public attention on the nature of the laws that support such extremists-led witch-hunts. The prime minister has asked for a review of the blasphemy laws, and the president and others have strongly endorsed it. A committee has been formed to examine these laws. So for the first time, at least there is a majority view, that the blasphemy law in its present form has become a source of shameful victimisation of minorities in the country. The first technical clause that the committee must grapple with is the fact that under these changes made by General Ziaul Haq in the Pakistan Penal Code, the definition of the term blasphemy is deliberately left vague, yet its punishment mandates a death sentence. It must also bear in mind that while no person has been executed by the state under any of these provisions, religious extremists have used these laws as a sanction to kill persons accused under the provisions.

Coalition politics can only go so far in achieving purist goals. As it stands, the blasphemy laws refer to Sections 295, 296, 297, and 298 of the Penal Code and address offenses relating to religion. Out of all the laws, if the committee had to negotiate a best option, it must bear in mind that Article 295-C and Article 295-B have been misused the most. Section 295(c), established the death penalty or life imprisonment, but it requires no proof for filing a complaint and triggers mandatory police action. The irony of the situation is that it has been exploited by criminals to safeguard the name of a Prophet (PBUH) who went out of his way to not just protect but make way for non-Muslims. Introduced in 1986 by a dictator seeking legitimacy behind fundamentalist Islam, these laws allow for the incarceration of any alleged transgressor on the basis of a simple oral statement. The denunciation clearly favours the use of the law as a means of personal vengeance. Its formulation and mechanisms of implementation have serious implications for social, constitutional and natural justice in Pakistan.

What adds to the miscarriage of justice that takes place in the name of blasphemy and other religious cases is that when they are brought to court, extremists often pack the courtroom and make public threats against an acquittal. As a result, judges and magistrates, seeking to avoid a confrontation with or violence from extremists, often continue trials indefinitely. Subsequently, those accused of blasphemy often face lengthy periods in jail and are burdened with increased legal costs and repeated court appearances.

Personal rivals and the authorities have used these laws, especially Section 295(c), to threaten, punish, or intimidate Ahmadis, Christians, Hindus, Zikris and even Muslims. It is common knowledge amongst the human rights community that the blasphemy laws also have been used to ‘settle scores’ unrelated to religious activity, such as intra-family or property disputes. Impunity for those who make false complaints is also a problem. Given the rise in extremist ideologies and terrorist outfits since 2001, the government must also consider introduction of a provision in the law that would make it easier to award punishment to those who file fake cases. Comfort can also be sought in Article 36 of the constitution which provides for adequate provisions to be made for minorities to be protected and represented in the state and provincial legislatures.

Since it is the week of August 14 when we celebrate our independence as much as our nationhood, history is a useful marker for this argument. Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah certainly used the binding glue of a Muslim community to carve out a nation-state for the Muslims of South Asia, and to that extent religion was seen as defining a culturally and economically coherent identity for the post-colonial community. Yet his famous speech on August 11, 1947, clearly marked a secular, non-exclusionary view of state-consolidation. So the contest for a Muslim identity in South Asia, as a negotiable, multi-dimensional formulation should have gained ascendancy. What we saw instead, after the Quaid’s death, was a serious and long-drawn contest for religious elite-capture of state identity as exclusively theological. The political forces defending this hijack of Pakistan’s contingent identity were rarely united, so they increasingly conceded space to the demands of a religious minority that could never reach critical mass in parliaments.

Islam expects a ruler to demonstrate high moral authority, but no ruler has dared to re-examine the blasphemy laws in the light of Islamic law itself. After announcing a revision of the blasphemy law in 2000 and 2004, General Musharraf backed down as he neither had the legitimacy nor the vision to consider the Quranic verse that says, “There is no compulsion in religion” (2; 256). Over the last ten years while churches burned and Christians, Hindus, Ahmadis and even Shias were persecuted, the government failed to intervene. The lack of a clear government response gave offenders and bigots a ‘free from jail card’ for acts of violence and intimidation against religious minorities.

What we have today is a legitimately elected government which has created an anti-extremist, non-sectarian and anti-terrorist consensus. This is one government that can review the blasphemy laws. It is a moment in history that must be seized. Pakistan’s identity may be ambiguous, but it is precisely this space that can be used as an opportunity to steer our fragile nation-hood in another direction.

The writer is a PPP MNA and a former federal minister for information and broadcasting.

by B. R. Gowani (translation of SAHIR LUDHIANVI song)

you’ll not become a Hindu nor a Muslim you’ll become
a human progeny you are, a human being you’ll become

it is wonderful that so far no name you have
nor an association with any religion you have
the knowledge that has divided the human beings
you’re blameless, for none of that knowledge you have

the harbinger of changed times you’ll become
a human progeny you are, a human being you’ll become

each one of the human beings, Lord created
out of that Hindu or Muslim, we created
nature had blessed us with just one land
but here India and there Iran, we created

the storm that breaks every barrier is what you’ll become
a human progeny you are, a human being you’ll become

one that teaches hatred, that religion is not yours
the step that tramples human beings is not yours
that temple which has no Quran, yours it is not
where there is no Gita, that mosque is not yours

an inspiration of peace and compromise you’ll become
a human progeny you are, a human being you’ll become

these merchants of religion one’s own country they sell
also the shrouds of the human corpses they sell
those slayers and looters sitting in the palaces
for the price of thorns, the garden’s soul they would sell

for them, the declaration of death you’ll become
a human progeny you are, a human being you’ll become

Notes

South Asian poet Sahir Ludhianvi (1921-1980), whose real name was Abdul Hai, was born in Ludhiana, Punjab. He wrote poetry on a wide variety of a subjects, including social and humanitarian issues, and received many awards, in addition to the Padma Shri from the Indian government and the Soviet Land Nehru Award from the government of the then Soviet Union. He also wrote songs for commercial films without compromising either the quality or his own conscience. He once said: Whatever is to be said, inclusion of conscience is necessary, that is, one should also feel it from inside. Sahir considered great South Asian poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz as his mentor.

The above song is from the early 1960’s film Dhool ka Phool (or Flower of Dust). The song is filmed on a man raising a child whom he had found abandoned.

A temple is a Hindu place of worship, Qur’an is the Muslim scripture, Gita is the Hindu scripture, and a mosque is a Muslim place of worship.

 

HERBICIDE RESISTANCE

Too risky to tolerate

Small farmers distribute risk and harvest different things from different sources . Heribicide Tolerant crops strike at the very root of such proven strategies relying on diversity, writes Suman Sahai.

24 July 2009 – The seed producer Monsanto India Ltd has sought regulatory approval in India to sell its genetically modified (GM) corn that is tolerant to herbicides. Herbicide tolerant (HT) crops are genetically engineered crops which contain genes that allow them to resist the application of herbicides – the chemicals that kill weeds as well as all other plants except the ones that are genetically engineered. The logic of creating HT plants is to have crops that will remain unharmed when chemicals are applied for weed control.
But there is more. HT plants can only be used together with the specific herbicides that they are programmed for. These are the company’s proprietary herbicides, so the farmer who buys HT seeds from a company also has to buy the company’s matched herbicide. This means double profits for the company, but are there benefits for the farmer as well?

A different scenario

Controlling weeds by using chemicals like herbicides becomes necessary in the large-landholding, labour starved agricultural conditions in industrial countries. In developing countries like India weeds are controlled manually. Farm operations like weeding, sowing, harvesting, threshing and winnowing are the key sources of rural employment, especially for women.The herbicide tolerance trait is essentially a labour saving and hence also a labour displacing trait . In a labour-surplus country like India, it will have disastrous economic implications. The Agbiotech Task Force chaired by M S Swaminathan has warned against introducing labour displacing technologies like herbicide tolerance.

India Together for more

A.G. NOORANI

A perceptive commentary on the political processes that led to the partition of India.

IN the entire corpus of American writings on India, this book stands out in all its uniqueness. Journalists have contributed reportage and scholars have written studies after research in India; both, for publication. Phillips Talbot wrote letters which were not intended for publication. He came to India having learnt Urdu which enabled him to move freely without an interpreter. He met Gandhi, Jinnah, Nehru, Patel, Liaquat Ali Khan and others. He was present when the Vicero y Lord Mountbatten addressed Pakistan’s Constituent Assembly on August 14, 1947, and rushed in time to be present at the midnight session of India’s Constituent Assembly on August 14-15, 1947.

What is more, he watched closely as the last opportunities of seeing India’s unity were frittered away, saw the bitter aftermath of Partition, noticed the nuances of the Kashmir dispute, and made observations of enduring relevance, comments that have stood the test of time.

The career itself was unique. After an impressive academic record, he became a local reporter for the Chicago Daily News. He was interested in world affairs, but the editors thought he was too young to be sent out as a foreign correspondent. A small New York foundation, the Institute of Current World Affairs, offered to send him to India on a fellowship. His letters to its director, William S. Rogers, comprise the bulk of the book. He was 23 then. A year at the London School of Oriental Studies (now of Oriental and African Studies) in the company of probationers of the Indian Civil Service, and lessons in Urdu, equipped him well. His first two years in India (1939-41) were spent at the Aligarh Muslim University, a Vedic ashram in Lahore, Tagore’s Shantiniketan, the Kodaikanal Ashram and Gandhi’s ashram in Sevagram. A stint at Manila with the United States Navy, and he was back in India as U.S. Naval Liaison Officer in Bombay (now Mumbai) for two years. In 1946, the Chicago Daily News made him a foreign correspondent and sent him back to India.

The University of Chicago awarded him a doctorate in International Affairs. He came back to spend a year at a time in India and Pakistan, where he wrote reports for the American Universities Field Staff. President Kennedy appointed him Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs. That he earned the megalomaniac Ambassador John Kenneth Galbraith’s wrath is a plus point. He became president of the Asia Society, of which he is now President Emeritus. The volume concludes with an afterword on India-U.S. relations now.

There are delightful vignettes on cultural life, on the Indian temperament, on the ways of politicians and their interactions with crowds. A letter from Aligarh on January 23, 1940, describes vividly a mushaira (Urdu poets’ conclave): “When that poet comes who can carry the crowd, the one whose voice is good and whose couplets are exciting, he is rewarded by almost breathless attention unsullied by sophisticated detachment. When he scores a touché, a deep rumble originates in the back of the room and rolls majestically forward. ‘Vah, vah’, the tribute greets him ‘bahut khub, bahut khub’, superb, superb. On feeling, more than hearing, the admiration expressed in these vibrations the pleased singer makes a sign of thanks, and moves forward into the next couplet.

“On this night younger student poets recited first. They are amateurs who have found beauties in the Urdu language and who have attempted to do much with them. Hardly any, though, received a hearing. After them came some hands more adept at the craft, and then two or three poets – Jigar and Ravish Siddiqi – whose names are known across India. The minstrel Jigar, whose former propensity for drink has been tamed by tea and coffee, cuts an arresting figure with his hair dropping to curls at his shoulders and his loose, untidy dress. On the platform he gulped down four cups of tea during one recitation. It was such experts as he who kept the interest, until 1 a.m. of 600 students who rise and pray before sunup.” Jigar was a legend in his lifetime.

There are perceptive profiles of leaders. Both Nehru and Gandhi took a liking for Talbot. He met Nehru in late 1939 at a United Provinces Congress Committee (UPCC) conference in Mathura. “During my stay in the camp Nehru spent upwards of three hours explaining to me his view of Indian problems. He is a thorough-going socialist, though he unhesitatingly follows Gandhi in some most unsocialistic channels.

Though a nationalist and sturdily opposed to the British government despite his Harrow and Cambridge education, he puts India in an international setting and describes its situation as one aspect of a world imperialist issue. He views America and Asia rather than Europe as the continents of the future. In some of his speeches he tells his peasant audience that ‘In our battle for freedom the democratic sentiment of the United States of America is with us.’ … Nehru lays the cause of communal strife at the door of economics (in accordance with his belief in the Marxist view of history). The Musalmans’ political organisation, he holds, is encouraged by ‘foreign’ interests and is financed by the taluqdar, or landholding, class, a very important element in the Muslim community. It stands to lose from the advance of Congress doctrinology, with its ‘End the feudal system in India!’

Therefore it may benefit through retention of power by the chief Congress opponent: the British government. But a pro-imperialism stand would be political suicide under popular government in India. Instead, the religious aspect of communalism is plumped for.”

This preposterously shallow theory governed Nehru’s disastrous policy towards the Muslim League. “So Nehru foresees that the communal problem as such will fade if India is left to settle the matter herself and if economic factors come to the fore, causing groups to unite or divide on the basis of bread-and-butter interests rather than according to religious creed.”

All of which shows how little Nehru understood India and the communal question which tore it apart. His arrogance and ignorance contributed not a little to the tragedy. During the First World War, socialists were dismayed to find the working class as nationalistic as any other in place of the solidarity which theoreticians accepted. Sixty years after Independence we face not only the communal question but also caste divisions.

“His philosophy of social and economic reorganisation has been the driving force of his political crusade, but it clashes with Gandhi’s economic concepts. Recognising that any move away from Gandhi would serve to split the nationalist movement seriously, Nehru has fought between his beliefs and his loyalties. He was heard to say, in 1940, ‘I could not write the Autobiography now. I am not sure enough of my ideas any more.’ One leftist labourite European expressed the opinion that Nehru was showing symptoms of schizophrenia.” Once in power, Nehru came to value “stability” (his word) over everything else. In 1947, Nehru imagined that “India as she is situated geographically and situated economically inevitably will become the centre of Asia”. It has not, partly because of his policies.

Flonnet for more

India completed 60 years of its independence day before yesterday. Ironically, I did not feel even a bit patriotic and proud of it. The State of ours today is in shambles; impunity and violence are rampant. Machinery existent to protect and regulate the use of sovereign power seem to be fading away. Kashmir and Nagaland still burn. Hindus and Muslims still fight. The poor are still poor and we still have a distaste for the caste system. I dont feel proud of this Country.

…………………………………………..

Once in a while, I read the NewYorker online edition to be aware of US sattires and activities. This time however, I saw this article by Pankaj Mishra on the New yorker talking about the legacy of the Indian Partition.

The article starts with an anecdote which is an interesting read;
Sixty years ago, on the evening of August 14, 1947, a few hours before Britain’s Indian Empire was formally divided into the nation-states of India and Pakistan, Lord Louis Mountbatten and his wife, Edwina, sat down in the viceregal mansion in New Delhi to watch the latest Bob Hope movie, “My Favorite Brunette.” Large parts of the subcontinent were descending into chaos, as the implications of partitioning the Indian Empire along religious lines became clear to the millions of Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs caught on the wrong side of the border. In the next few months, some twelve million people would be uprooted and as many as a million murdered. But on that night in mid-August the bloodbath—and the fuller consequences of hasty imperial retreat—still lay in the future, and the Mountbattens probably felt they had earned their evening’s entertainment.

Pankaj then proceeds to talk about how we Indians made our tryst with destiny and sought to set India free. But that, he argues, was not for the secular India but for protecting the interests of a 400 million hindus and not caring about the Muslims who stayed back in India. The article also talks about Nehru and Jinnah’s policies and actions during the brief period of finalising the partition. The idea of the article seems to be to give a brief of the partition history of India by citing incidents relevant in this regard.

Below are certain excerpts from the article;

But sectarian riots in Punjab and Bengal dimmed hopes for a quick and dignified British withdrawal, and boded ill for India’s assumption of power. Not surprisingly, there were some notable absences at the Independence Day celebrations in New Delhi on August 15th. Gandhi, denouncing freedom from imperial rule as a “wooden loaf,” had remained in Calcutta, trying, with the force of his moral authority, to stop Hindus and Muslims from killing each other. His great rival Mohammed Ali Jinnah, who had fought bitterly for a separate homeland for Indian Muslims, was in Karachi, trying to hold together the precarious nation-state of Pakistan.

……………

Trains carrying nothing but corpses through a desolate countryside became the totemic image of the savagery of partition. British soldiers confined to their barracks, ordered by Mountbatten to save only British lives, may prove to be the most enduring image of imperial retreat. With this act of moral dereliction, the British Empire finally disowned its noble sense of mission. As Paul Scott put it in “The Raj Quartet,” the epic of imperial exhaustion and disillusion, India in 1947 was where the empire’s high idea of itself collapsed and “the British came to the end of themselves as they were.”

The British Empire passed quickly and with less humiliation than its French and Dutch counterparts, but decades later the vicious politics of partition still seems to define India and Pakistan. The millions of Muslims who chose to stay in India never ceased to be hostages to Hindu extremists. As recently as 2002, Hindu nationalists massacred more than two thousand Muslims in the state of Gujarat. The dispute over Kashmir, the biggest unfinished business of partition, committed countries with mostly poor and illiterate populations to a nuclear arms race and nourished extremists in both countries: Islamic fundamentalists in Pakistan, Hindu nationalists in India. It also damaged India’s fragile democracy—Indian soldiers and policemen in Kashmir routinely execute and torture Pakistan-backed Muslim insurgents—and helped cement the military’s extra-constitutional influence over Pakistan’s inherently weaker state. Tens of thousands have died in Kashmir in the past decade and a half, and since 1947 sectarian conflicts in India and Pakistan have killed thousands more.
Many ethnic minorities chafed at the postcolonial nationalism of India and Pakistan, and some rebelled. At least one group—Bengali Muslims—succeeded in establishing their own nation-state (Bangladesh), though only after suffering another round of ethnic cleansing, this time by fellow-Muslims. Other minorities demanding political autonomy—Nagas, Sikhs, Kashmiris, Baluchis—were quelled, often with greater brutality than the British had ever used against their subjects.

Social Blog for more

(Sepiamutiny.com archives)
Via 3QD, I came across an article in the Washington Post about a 10 year research project, based in Delhi but funded by the Ford Foundation, to interview thousands of survivors of the 1947 Partition.
The story begins with a powerful anecdote:

Every year in March, Bir Bahadur Singh goes to the local Sikh shrine and narrates the grim events of the long night six decades ago when 26 women in his family offered their necks to the sword for the sake of honor.

At the time, sectarian riots were raging over the partition of the subcontinent into India and Pakistan, and the men of Singh’s family decided it was better to kill the women than have them fall into the hands of Muslim mobs.

“None of the women protested, nobody wept,” Singh, 78, recalled as he stroked his long, flowing white beard, his voice slipping into a whisper. “All I could hear was the sound of prayer and the swing of the sword going down on their necks. My story can fill a book.” (link)
These ‘honor killings’, where women were killed by male members of their families to prevent their being raped by communal mobs, were not at all unusual. I do not know if they happened in other communities, but in the Sikh community in particular it is thought that thousands of women died this way. (I do not think anybody knows exactly how many it was.)

Thus far, the project has interviewed about 1300 people, including Bir Bahadur Singh. The project (“Reconstructing Lives: Memories of Partition”) does not appear to have a web presence, and I’m not sure whether there are any plans to digitize the tapes from the interviews, or publish raw transcripts. Hopefully, that will be in the cards at some point.

Readers, if you have grandparents (or great-grandparents?) who went through this, and who have stories they want to tell, I would urge you to interview and record what they went through while they’re still around. (Projects like the one I’m describing are only interviewing people still in India — I’m sure there are more than a few who have ended up settled abroad.)

If you’ve actually done such an interview, have you published the text of it anywhere? (If you’re interested in doing this, drop me a line.)

Why all this is important:

Unlike the Jewish Holocaust, where there have been many documentary projects, including a number of survivor interview projects, the Partition of India has only been studied in dribs and drabs. There is, as I understand it, no public memorial to the Partition in India itself (compare to the many museums and monuments devoted to memorializing the Holocaust in western countries).

But a full knowledge of the true history, including these personal testimonials, is extremely important, for a number of reasons. First, it adds to the historical record, and makes it harder for extremist (communal) groups on both sides of the border to distort the story, or to put all of the blame for today’s problems on the other party.

Second, a fuller knowledge from a position of historical distance might help everyone address the lingering trauma the event created (it’s no accident that the person heading this operation is a psychologist), so we can start to address the root causes of this kind of violence.

Sepia for more

The history of a nation as young as Pakistan is necessarily a living history. After all, the generation that witnessed Partition and the subsequent events that shaped the nation is still with us. Their memories and stories comprise the most vital account of how this country came to be what it is today.

In recognition of this fact, Dawn.com presents oral histories of Pakistan’s first citizens as documented by the Citizens Archive of Pakistan (CAP), a non-profit educational institution and heritage centre.

In this audio slideshow, Razia Hamid recalls the details of her life – from tonga rides to communal tensions – as a young girl in post-Partition Quetta.

For more on CAP, click here.

Dawn for more

By Pran Nevile

Fifty years have passed since India became independent. I have vivid memories of those terrible days when Lahore, the city of my birth and upbringing was burning and dying, while the Britishers were engaged in the momentous task of the partition of the subcontinent.

To Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, independence meant to use his memorable phrase, ‘a tryst with destiny’. To Jinnah it was the fulfillment of his dream of a separate homeland for the Muslims, Pakistan.Lahore has a long and ancient past. No other city in the subcontinent can perhaps be said to have a more chequered history than Lahore, a city ruled by Hindu kings, Mughal emperors, Sikh monarchs and British sovereigns. As the capital of British province and centre of a modern system of administration, Lahore emerged as the fortress of the Indian empire that watched over the troublesome Afghans and the Russian borders.

With its chain of colleges and professional institutions, Lahore was the leading centre of education in North India. So much so that students from Delhi came to Lahore for higher education. The city had acquired the reputation of being the Paris of the east. Fashion ruled the life of its people whose lifestyles, habits and customs were considered to be most admirable. It had also become the nucleus of commerce and politics.

The interplay of historical forces had made the Muslims of the Punjab less fanatic and the Hindus and Sikhs less orthodox and ritual-conscious than elsewhere in the country. The three communities mixed freely and had cordial and friendly relations subscribing as they did to a composite Punjabi culture which blossomed from the early decade of the century. Muslim influence of nearly a thousand years had left its impact on the citizens’ dress, customs and manners, food and language and even their names.

The British announcement of the decision to quit India by June 1948 had a disastrous effect on the situation in the Punjab. The Muslim League launched a campaign of direct action against Unionist Party leader, Khizr’s banning the para-military Muslim League National Guards Organisation along with the Hindu Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Muslim League leaders defied government orders and courted arrests and there were strikes in Lahore. Khizr was forced to come to terms with the League by lifting his ban but in his exasperation he gave his resignation on March 3, 1947.

Geocities for more

Former President of Paksitan Pervez Musharraf is Singing Live in Official Party….!

(Via IAOJ )

Opium takes over Afghan families In dozens of remotes villages in Afghanistan, opium addiction has become so entrenched that whole families are addicts. The American government and the United Nations estimate the addiction rate in Afghanistan is 75% higher than in the U.S. (Aug 10, 2009)

JULIE JACOBSON/AP PHOTO
Members of Islam Beg’s family smoke opium inside their home in Sarab. Many children become hooked by adults blowing smoke into their mouths.

Drug use that spreads from parent to child turns remote area into landscape of suffering.

By Rukmini Callimachi ASSOCIATED PRESS Aug 10, 2009 04:30 AM

SARAB, AFGHANISTAN–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.

The addiction moves from house to house, infecting entire communities cut off from the rest of the world by glacial streams. From just one family years ago, at least half the people of Sarab, population 1,850, are now addicts.

Afghanistan supplies nearly all the world’s opium, the raw ingredient used to make heroin, and while most of the deadly crop is exported, enough is left behind to create a vicious cycle of addiction.

There are at least 200,000 opium and heroin addicts in Afghanistan, according to a 2005 survey by the United Nations. A new survey is expected to show even higher rates of addiction, a window into the human toll of Afghanistan’s back-to-back wars and desperate poverty.
Unlike in the West, the close-knit nature of communities here makes addiction a family affair. Instead of passing from one rebellious teenager to another, the habit passes from mother to daughter, father to son. It’s turning villages like this one into a landscape of human depredation.

Except for a few soiled mats, Beg’s house is bare. He has pawned all his family’s belongings to pay for drugs.

“I am ashamed of what I have become,” says Beg, an unwashed turban curled on his head.

“I’ve lost my self-respect. I’ve lost my values. I take the food from this child to pay for my opium,” he says, pointing to his 5-year-old grandson, Mamadin. “He just stays hungry.”

Beg’s forefathers owned much of the land in the village, located beside a gushing stream at the end of a canyon of craggy mountains in Badakhshan province, hundreds of kilometres northeast of Kabul.
He once had 1,200 sheep. He sold them off one by one to pay for drugs.

The land followed. He’s turned his spacious home, once lined with ornamental carpets, into a mud shell. He grows potatoes in rows in the last of his fields and each time he harvests the crop, he has to make a choice – feed his grandchildren, or buy opium. He usually chooses drugs.

Basic necessities like soap have fallen by the wayside.

“If we have 50 cents, we buy opium and we smoke it. We don’t use the 50 cents to buy soap to clean our clothes,” explains Raihan, Beg’s daughter and the mother of the 1-year-old. The toddler wears a filthy shirt and no underwear.

“I can be out of food, but not out of opium.”

The country’s few drug treatment centres are in cities far from villages like this one. And even those able to get themselves to the cities are often unable to get help. The drug clinic in Takhar province, the nearest to Sarab, has a waiting list of 2,000 people and only 30 beds.

So the villagers are drowning in opium. They begin taking it when they are sick, relying on its anesthetic properties – opium is also used to make morphine.

Sarab, a village that is snowed in for up to three months a year, is a day’s walk over mountain paths to the nearest hospital. The few shops in town do not even sell aspirin.

“Opium is our doctor,” says Beg. “When your stomach hurts, you take a smoke. Then you take a little more. And a little more. And then, you’re addicted. Once you’re hooked, it’s over. You’re finished.”

When his grandson Shamsuddin, 1, cut his finger in the door jamb, Beg blew opium smoke into the child’s mouth, a common practice in this part of the world. He doesn’t want his grandchild to become an addict, but he says he has no choice.

“If there is no medicine here, what should we do? The only way to make him feel better is to give him opium.”

Health workers say to treat the addiction, they need to treat the entire community. Last year, the Ministry of Health took 120 addicts from Sarab to a facility one day’s drive away. Three months later, they discovered 115 of the 120 had relapsed.

“First my neighbour started doing opium again,” explains Noor, one of the women treated. “Then my cousin. Then my husband. And then after a while, I also started.”

Many addicts sell their land and go deeply into debt to maintain their habit.

“I used to be a rich man,” says Dadar, whose family of seven is addicted. “I had cattle. I had land. And then I started smoking. I sold the cattle. I sold my land. Now I have nothing.”

He wears an old windbreaker encrusted with dirt. His wife pulls back her lips to show a mouthful of diseased teeth. Their grandchildren have knotted hair and ripped clothes stained with muck.

Because they’ve sold their cattle, they no longer eat meat. When they sold the last of their land, they also lost their wheat, potatoes and greens. Their diet now consists of tea and the occasional piece of bread given by a neighbour.

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.”

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 grandchildren – the only ones 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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