Tall and painfully thin, Homa sits in a tiny, windowless room in a Kabul hospital and tells the story of her heroin addiction.
Afraid of being disowned by her husband for talking to the press, she insists reporters use a false name to protect her identity and refuses to be filmed or photographed.
The 25-year-old has been smoking heroin for 10 years and wants to kick the habit for the sake of her three children.
She is one of thousands of Afghan drug addicts, who, in a country that dominates global output and trade in poppies, opium and their potent derivatives, are virtually ignored.
With the influx of 2 million refugees into Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban in late 2001 the number of drug addicts has risen sharply, and worrying new trends, including the use of needles to inject heroin, are emerging.
"It is forcing the Afghans to wake up and acknowledge that drug use is a problem internally as well as externally," said Adam Bouloukos, deputy representative of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime in Afghanistan.
"They had a sort of head-in-the-sand approach that: ``Hey, we make these things here, we grow this poppy but it's all exported. The real problem is all those junkies on the streets of London.' But there is quite a lot of drug use here," Bouloukous said.
On a recent visit to Gardez, 110km south of Kabul, UN staff found many intravenous heroin users, a new development in a country where the drug is traditionally smoked through improvised pipes.
"That's kind of a first and is horribly dangerous, because with that [needle sharing] comes HIV and AIDS and all the other problems that this medical service here in this country cannot accommodate."
Cold Turkey
Homa is having a tough time kicking a habit she has had since getting married at the age of 15.
"I can't sleep, there is pain all over my body, especially in my head, and I feel cold sitting here," she said, huddled on her bed under a black cloak and headscarf.
Next to her is her eight-year-old daughter who plays with a plastic pistol as her mother talks. Homa also has two young sons.
"I don't know how long it will take. All I know is that I need to give up. The doctors have been giving me medication but it doesn't have any effect," she said of her treatment, which has lasted 10 days so far.
Part of the problem is the social stigma attached to her addiction, particularly because she is a woman in this deeply conservative Islamic country.
Homa has kept her dependence on heroin a secret from everyone except her husband, brother-in-law and two cousins.
Her sad, dark eyes light up momentarily when she speaks of her "love marriage," a relative rarity in a country where so many weddings are arranged. But her husband, himself a reformed addict, does not come to visit.
Downstairs in the men's ward, 10 drug addicts are crammed into three small rooms and share the dusty, fly-ridden common space outside with 11 mental patients.
Mohammad Nasser, 27, is finding the treatment more effective than Homa, and says he is through the worst.
Ahmed Khetab Kakar, mental health director at Kabul Central Hospital and a specialist in neuro-surgery, said his facilities were too small to accommodate the number of addicts seeking treatment.
"Before the war we had facilities in all the provinces, but they were all destroyed and so they have to come here," he said.
Patients would normally go through a detoxification program lasting a month, but usually they are discharged well before that due to the lack of resources.
"As long as poppy cultivation continues in Afghanistan the number of drug addicts will increase, Kakar said.
"Because people have been through war for 10 or 20 years, many of them have mental problems and the main reason these people get addicted to drugs is these mental problems," he said.
Poppies growing
everywhere
One problem is that poppy cultivation shows no real sign of abating.
Haji Mula Nasser, a farmer standing in a vast field of red-pink poppies in Kandahar province, explained that he earned about 2,000 times as much money from making opium as he did from growing wheat.
"You can see the difference? Due to our economic problems we grow poppies," he said.
Bouloukos said dire warnings of a record poppy crop this year in Afghanistan were premature and that yields in some key growing regions including Nangarhar and Kandahar were down, partly due to crop disease.
But he conceded overall output was likely to be high again.
Afghanistan is set to hold on to its place as the world's number one opium producer last year, with output at roughly 3,400 tonnes. Profits from trafficking the illicit drug are estimated to account for a fifth of the country's GDP.
Recently, China launched another diplomatic offensive against Taiwan, improperly linking its “one China principle” with UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 to constrain Taiwan’s diplomatic space. After Taiwan’s presidential election on Jan. 13, China persuaded Nauru to sever diplomatic ties with Taiwan. Nauru cited Resolution 2758 in its declaration of the diplomatic break. Subsequently, during the WHO Executive Board meeting that month, Beijing rallied countries including Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Belarus, Egypt, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka, Laos, Russia, Syria and Pakistan to reiterate the “one China principle” in their statements, and assert that “Resolution 2758 has settled the status of Taiwan” to hinder Taiwan’s
Can US dialogue and cooperation with the communist dictatorship in Beijing help avert a Taiwan Strait crisis? Or is US President Joe Biden playing into Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) hands? With America preoccupied with the wars in Europe and the Middle East, Biden is seeking better relations with Xi’s regime. The goal is to responsibly manage US-China competition and prevent unintended conflict, thereby hoping to create greater space for the two countries to work together in areas where their interests align. The existing wars have already stretched US military resources thin, and the last thing Biden wants is yet another war.
As Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu’s party won by a landslide in Sunday’s parliamentary election, it is a good time to take another look at recent developments in the Maldivian foreign policy. While Muizzu has been promoting his “Maldives First” policy, the agenda seems to have lost sight of a number of factors. Contemporary Maldivian policy serves as a stark illustration of how a blend of missteps in public posturing, populist agendas and inattentive leadership can lead to diplomatic setbacks and damage a country’s long-term foreign policy priorities. Over the past few months, Maldivian foreign policy has entangled itself in playing
A group of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers led by the party’s legislative caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (?) are to visit Beijing for four days this week, but some have questioned the timing and purpose of the visit, which demonstrates the KMT caucus’ increasing arrogance. Fu on Wednesday last week confirmed that following an invitation by Beijing, he would lead a group of lawmakers to China from Thursday to Sunday to discuss tourism and agricultural exports, but he refused to say whether they would meet with Chinese officials. That the visit is taking place during the legislative session and in the aftermath