Religious campaign for drug demand reduction

Afghanistan is launching a nationwide religious campaign to reduce addiction in the post-war country, officials at the Haj and Awqaf (Religious Affairs) ministry announced on Tuesday. Around 500 Afghan religious leaders have participated in a symposium in the Afghan capital, Kabul, to discuss combating drug abuse throughout the country. "As drug abuse is forbidden in Islam, religious leaders can be very effective in the struggle against drug abuse - particularly at the grass roots level," Neyamatullah Shahrani, minister of Haj and Awqaf, said in Kabul. The two-day gathering aimed at understanding drug addiction from an Islamic perspective and to identify the role of mosques in various aspects of drug demand reduction, Shahrani said. "After the symposium these religious leaders will go back to their provinces and with the help and coordination of local Mullahs, a nationwide campaign of preaching on drug demand reduction will be launched," the minister explained. As the world's leading poppy cultivating country - providing more than 80 percent of the world's illicit opium trade in 2004 -the effort is particularly timely. Exact figures are not available on the level of drug abuse within the country, but in early 2003 the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimated, using a methodology of key informants, that the number of drug users in Kabul city was at least 63,000. The same study showed that hashish was the top drug used, with opium, heroin, pharmaceuticals and alcohol following. But officials at the newly established counter-narcotics ministry believe drug abuse is increasing and that even women in rural areas were becoming addicted to certain illicit drugs. “If we have 63,000 [drug addicts] among a population of three to four million in Kabul, it means that there are more than half a million drug addicts in the estimated 25 million population of Afghanistan," Mohammad Zafar, head of drug demand reduction at the counter-narcotics ministry, said, adding results of a new nationwide survey on drug abuse would be released in the autumn. Meanwhile, a senior representative of Nejat, an NGO running rehabilitation centres and community outreach facilities in Kabul and other provinces, suggested there were between 30,000-60,000 addicts, but cautioned against trying to define the problem with data that were not reliable in a society where few will admit to using drugs - considered unclean and forbidden by Islam. To cut drug abuse, Kabul is trying to use a spiritual anti-drug campaign this time. In Afghanistan, religious leaders are very influential and their messages are particularly powerful in rural areas - Tay Bian How, head of the Colombo Plan Secretariat, a prime mover in drug prevention and control programmes in the Asia-Pacific region since 1973, which is supporting the Kabul symposium, said. "The Colombo Plan’s Drug Advisory Programme believes that religious leaders, if trained and empowered, can take up vital leadership. They do have a role in assisting not just the community but also the government in fighting the drug problem,” How said, adding that those affiliated with a religion were less likely to abuse drugs than individuals who were not. Through its Drug Advisory Programme, the Colombo Plan has over the past three years been developing a faith-based approach to combating drug addiction. The Colombo Plan, which gets the majority of its funding from the US government, has been working in Indonesia, Malaysia, southern Philippines and Pakistan. The Kabul symposium came after a 40-member Afghan religious leaders group visited Malaysia and another 40 were trained in Kabul in 2004. “This is the biggest gathering of religious leaders that the Colombo Plan through its Drug Advisory Programme has ever organised for its member countries,” How noted.