Thread by @TelegraphWorld

🔴According to anti-narcotics experts, 11 per cent of Afghanistan's 34 million population are drug users.

Here @Telegraph takes a look inside the clinic where Afghanistan’s addicts are forced into withdrawal.

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telegraph.co.uk/world-news/202…

The drug addicts rounded up by the Taliban brace for 45 days of painful withdrawal...

📸Bulent Kilic

Before the Taliban marched into Kabul, police in the capital would sometimes arrest addicts and transfer them to the centre.

⚫️But since the hardline Islamists took control, the frequency of raids on areas where addicts gather appears to have increased.

📸Bulent Kilic

Hundreds of users shelter in squalid conditions at Pul-e-Sukhta, under a bridge in western Kabul synonymous with hard drugs and violent crime.

🚑They recognise the rehab clinic's ambulance.

📸Bulent Kilic

'God willing, we can go home'

⚫️During their 45-day rehabilitation stay at the 1,000-bed centre, the men spend their time lying on cots in large dormitories or crouched in the yard, soaking up the autumn sun

📸Bulent Kilic

There is little methadone available to help wean the opium and heroin addicts, and nothing to remove the withdrawal pains for those being weaned off of meth, doctors say

📸Bulent Kilic

This morning, Emal, 36, shuffles into the registration room. He opens his logbook and notes that it is the fourth time he has been here.

He was last discharged just 10 days ago
telegraph.co.uk/world-news/202…

As Emal leaves, 22-year-old Bilal Ahmad, skinny and jittery, takes a seat. He is also addicted to meth, and has been through the programme before

The men are searched carefully when they arrive.
In groups of six, they then shuffle to the tiled building that houses the showers

📸Bulent Kilic

When they emerge, dripping, they are handed over to a team of barbers who shave their heads to prevent the spread of lice, but leave their scraggy beards

📸Bulent Kilic

A cheap and easy crop to grow

⚫️Poppy cultivation was banned under the Taliban's last rule in the 1990s, but the export of heroin from Taliban-controlled areas provided the hardliners with billions of dollars during their insurgency

With poppies cheap and easy to grow, Afghanistan provides around 90 per cent of the world's production of heroin

📸Bulent Kilic

For now, the staff in the centre are all working without pay.

❌Salaries have not been paid out for four months as Afghanistan's economy teeters on the verge of collapse.

Read the full report here ⬇️

telegraph.co.uk/world-news/202…