No one knows for certain how widespread drug use and addiction is in Afghanistan.
A United Nations survey of drug use across the country has been completed, but its numbers are still being crunched and have not yet been released. Afghan officials and experts cite a figure of 60,000 drug users in the capital city of Kabul (estimated total population 4 milions ), but while the common conception is that that the given number reflects the number of opium or heroin drug users, reality is a bit more complicated.
When pressed on the issue of Sinless Council symposium on the feasibility of licensed opium production, conceded that the 60,000 figure measured drug users, not drug dependent. The situation is further confused by the tendency Afghanistan is one of the ancestral homes of cannabis and to consider it as a "narcotic," is neither medically nor scientifically defensible.                                                                                                                             (Mr. QasimZamani Founder & Executive Director)
One of the world's poorest countries, decimated by a quarter-century of war and foreign invasion, and home to nearly 90% of the planet's illicit opium supply, Afghanistan is ill-prepared to deal with a rising tide of drug use. But despite all the obstacles it faces, including the weakness of the central government and limited support from the international community, the country and its people are taking steps to confront drug use and help its citizens who fell into addiction and abuse.
Nejat received training from Sankalp a very successful NGO in Mumbai, India which has been treating with street drug users for many years.  Two members of Nejat went and witnessed the operations of this NGO in Mumbai in 2004 in order to learn how a similar service could
be implemented in Kabul, Afghanistan.  Sankalp is also a founder member of the FORUM network of NGOs in Asia and the Caribbean that are providing drug user services. After their Training in Mumbai the Nejat members visit Sharan a harm reduction NGO in Delhi and received further information and training.
When returning to Kabul the same team started of for the first time similar services on the streets of Kabul with active drug users, the aim was and still is to protect the drug user from the harmful consequences associated with drug use particularly from the transmittion of blood borne diseases that so often effects the street based drug user through the limitation that life on the street inherently includes.  Our emphasis is on providing clean injecting equipment, provision of hygiene services, additional nutrition, friendship with people and thereby informal counseling and referral to treatment when the Drug users feel ready to change their lives.
Nejat now notes with satisfaction that this type of service has been duplicated by several NGO and hopes that even more NGO will take up the challenge to help drug users on the streets of our Afghan cities, as this type of service is the first step in the process to assist a person to regain a meaningful life!
Nejat first begun its activities across the border in Peshawar, Pakistan, in 1991 to deal with what would become millions of refugees fleeing factional violence in Afghanistan; NEJAT opened its Kabul facility in 2003. It still deals primarily with refugees this time Afghans returning home who developed serious opium and/or heroin habits as they decimated in Pakistani refugee camps for years waiting for political violence to subside in their homeland.
In NEJAT we lead a small team of doctors and social workers (many of them volunteers, some of the social workers graduates of his in the program) who bring addicts through a comprehensive rehabilitation program beginning with a one week detox. followed by a
second week of orientation and then a month-long rehabilitation program. During the program, clients are taught not only to resist the lure of opiates but also social and job skills, such as learning to weave carpets or make shoes, and some will even be able to get small loans to open small businesses. (Unsurprisingly, small businesses here often consist of a cardboard or wood shack, and whatever the product is, the overhead to open and operate a small business in Afghanistan is very small.) It's not just drug treatment. NEJAT also includes a harm reduction component, with an active needle exchange program, as well as condom distribution. With AIDS a rising problem, both are critical to the effort to get a grip on the epidemic. And while the inpatient treatment program is limited to men, the center's outreach programs also target women and children, a population typically neglected not only in drug treatment programs but by Afghan society as a whole. The silent, unseen part of the Afghan population, women are expected to be behind the walls of home and not out on the street.
AIDS has been like the tsunami for us, In addition to activities with injection drug users, we are also reaching out to sex workers in the Kharabat, Kabul. We have a team there consisting of doctors, social workers, and volunteers that do outreach there. AIDS is a terrible illness as it brings is a big shame to Afghans families and patients experience severe marginalisaton from everybody needless to say this problem is , and it's getting worse every day.
In the meantime, NEJAT programs do what they can with volunteers and a handful of ill-paid workers. Fortunately, NEJAT is generating them with its treatment and rehabilitation program.
One group of brothers and sisters in their late teens and early twenties, the Yaqubi family, is a sterling example. After the death of their mother in Iran, the family's father descended into heroin use, and the kids followed him. But as their money ran out, the Yaqubi children realized they needed help and turned to NEJAT. Now, eleven months later, the kids are not only clean, but helping at the center. That's the spirit. Despite the assistance of the international community -- and it is certainly deserved after the beating Afghanistan has taken from great power geopolitics the Afghan national will ultimately have to save itself. With drug treatment and prevention programs underway, with harm reduction programs gaining a toehold, and with the help of Afghan citizens like the Yaqubis, the country is taking the first steps.

Muhammad Qasim Zamani
Executive Director, NEJAT Center, Kabul