Dr. S

When I first visited Afghanistan in 2024, I went to the “Omid” (Hope) drug rehabilitation centre in Kabul, which was bombed by Pakistan last night. Afghanistan has one of the most successful opium addiction rehabilitation programmes in the world. This is despite 20 years of a brutal US-led NATO occupation that proliferated opium usage domestically and monopolised its global exportation. I met former addicts who had become Huffadh of the Quran, as well as electricians, tailors, carpenters, bricklayers, and teachers of Pashto, while others were studying English. Many had completely rebuilt their lives. Some had spent just three months there and never wanted to leave, choosing instead to stay on as mentors and volunteers to help others recover. In the space of just a few years, opium addiction across parts of the country had dropped so significantly that in many towns and cities it had become almost non-existent. To now see Pakistan bomb the same rehabilitation centre, killing at least 400 civilians, is deeply disturbing. Those killed were patients, people who had entered that centre with hope. Muslims in the process of turning their lives around, who could have gone on to become Quran teachers, labourers, and contributors to their society. To carry out such an attack in the concluding nights of Ramadan, at a time when the Muslim world is already in turmoil, is utterly shameful, regardless of any anti-terrorism justification put forward by Pakistan. Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji‘oon.