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Photo:United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime

A drug that is a mix of meth and opioids, and believed to be the first of its kind in the world, is on the rise in Afghanistan.

UN drug experts have warned that pills being sold on the streets as tablet K mark a new era in narcotics production because some of them contain both stimulants and depressant drugs. The tablet also represents a further step in the expansion of a cheap synthetic drug market serving up to the worlds poorest populations.

Tablet Ks look like badly-made, colourful ecstasy pills and sell for between 3 and 12 each. Alongside the usual mish-mash of gimmicky pinger logos, such as Donald Trumps head, Rolex and Tesla, batches of tablet Ks have been stamped with the name of the Netflix series La Casa De Papel (Money Heist) with a masked face from the show on the back.

The pills have been steadily growing in popularity, particularly among young Afghans, since 2016. Despite this, until now, there has been little attempt to find out what the pills contain.

But on Tuesday, the UNs drugs office published a forensic analysis of 536 pills seized over 2020 and 2021 and sold on the streets as tablet K. It found that while the drugs were sold under one brand name, the contents fell into three types.

Of the pills tested, 42 percent contained mainly meth, 23 percent mainly MDMA, and 32 percent contained the surprise mixture of methamphetamine and opioids. The opioids found in these pills was most often heroin, but was sometimes tramadol, a synthetic opioid painkiller.

Although the MDMA infused pills are typically sold for more than those containing meth or heroin, the report said there was no obvious link between the visual aspects of the tablets and the presence of a particular drug. So in essence people buying tablet K are essentially involved in a lucky, or unlucky dip, and could find themselves getting high from meth, MDMA or a combination of meth and heroin. One in ten of the pills also contained sildenafil, which is sold under the brand name Viagra.

The presence of an illicit drug product in tablet form that contains both methamphetamine and opioids has implications for the understanding of drug use and supply in Afghanistan and beyond, said the report. The identification of opioids in a large number of samples [containing methamphetamine] was unexpected.

Mixing stimulant and depressant drugs in the same hit is something heroin users have been doing for decades with speedballs, by buying cocaine or crack and heroin, and either injecting or snorting them both at the same time. Even though the drugs work in opposite directions to each other, studies have shown that taking a speedball can potentiate the normal effects of both drugs to create a more extreme high. Stimulants and depressants are also mixed in Red Bull and vodkas or espresso martinis.

But drug trade observers who spoke to VICE World News said they had not come across a ready-made product containing the two types of high before.

Batches of tablet Ks have been stamped with the name of the Netflix series La Casa De Papel (Money Heist) Photo: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime

I have never heard of such combinations in tablets in European drug markets or elsewhere, said Andrew Cunnningham, head of drug markets and crime at the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA). He said that so far these types of pills seemed to be a local phenomenon in Afghan drug markets and that they were likely cheap products targeted at the Afghan population.

Between March 2020 and March 2021 officials seized 80kg of the tablets (around 160,000 individual pills), double the amount seized the previous year. In 2020 a survey carried out among young people found that for the first time use of tablet K was higher than methamphetamine, also a rising drug in Afghanistan which has become a meth production hub.

According to the report, tablet Ks are found across urban and rural parts of Afghanistan, with a high prevalence in the Eastern (bordering Pakistan) and Northeastern (bordering Tajikistan) regions, where use of the drug is two to three times higher than average. Production facilities for tablet K have been detected in Kabul and Kunduz, but there have also been reports of the pills being trafficked from Peshawar in Pakistan and Tajikistan.

Analysis of tablet Ks found the pills contained a total of 26 different substances. Alongside meth, heroin and MDMA analysts found a plethora of cheap pharmaceuticals such as caffeine, carisoprodol (a muscle relaxant), chlorpheniramine and diphenhydramine (antihistamines), dextromethorphan (a cough suppressant), propranolol (a beta blocker), diazepam, sildenafil, paracetamol, tramadol, chloroquine (an antimalarial medication), and tinidazole (an antiprotozoal medication).

Afghanistan may no longer seem such an unlikely place for synthetic drug manufacture and constitutes just the latest example of a largely plant-based drug economy embracing synthetic drug manufacture, said the report.

Excerpt from:
A New Drug That Contains Meth and Heroin Is on the Rise in Afghanistan - VICE

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Original post:
Home - Daily Outlook Afghanistan, The leading Independent ...

After Kabul fell to the Taliban in August 2021, Halima received an email from the American University of Afghanistan that she would be on a flight out the next day. She took a small backpack with two sets of clothes, and left behind her family and the first 19 years of her life. The next day, she arrived at the American University of IraqSolemani.

She was at first worried about her safety in what she regarded as another war-torn country, but she eventually settled in and felt secure at her new campus.

Her course schedule is a mix of in-person classes with fellow students from the university in Iraq and online courses with Afghan students from around the world.

Scattered throughout the world, the students from the American University of Afghanistan are logging on across time zones to continue their education. Over half of the students have now been evacuated from Afghanistan and are mainly in Iraq, Kyrgyzstan and the U.S., with others in countries like Germany, France, Chile and Rwanda.

CBS News spoke to seven current students and is not using their real names out of security concerns for the students and their families.

The American University of Afghanistan was established in 2006 as the nation's first private college with a grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development. It was founded with 50 students and grew to over 1,000, with the aim of establishing a form of higher education built on the American model. The physical campus closed soon after the Taliban took control this summer.

Over 2,000 miles to the east of Iraq, in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, Fazal, a business student, joins his class from his new apartment near the American University of Central Asia. He's learning some Russian, the local language spoken, to get by in his new environment.

"I needed to leave my family, my father and mother, because I didn't want to be a threat to them by being affiliated with a U.S. institution," he said.

Concentrating on his studies has been difficult, with his mind wandering back to his homeland and family, but he remains motivated to graduate. "It has been a struggle to get back to the same focus, the attention span that I previously had," he said. "But I kind of keep trying and putting in effort to get back to being normal."

"They were impressive people even in relatively normal times, but what they're demonstrating now with their resilience and their ambitions and their desire to learn surpasses anything I've ever seen from students anywhere in the world," said Ian Bickford, president of the university.

Keeping the classes going hasn't been easy. Schedules still run on Kabul time to standardize when students around the world meet. That has students and professors signing on at various hours of the night and day.

The professors preview all the material at the beginning of the week, with online class sessions acting as a supplement. This format aims to help students who may not be able to attend every class.

"We thought that was a really important signal to send to our community that we are still there and we can still teach," said Dr. Victoria Fontan, vice president of academic affairs at the university and a professor of peace and conflict studies.

The students remaining in Afghanistan face unique challenges. With electricity and internet no longer reliable, it has been difficult for Norie to attend class. She has not told her family that she is continuing her studies with the university online. She fears them finding out, accidentally mentioning her continuing education and the repercussions that could follow.

But beyond the anxiety is the loneliness that plagues her current life as a woman in Afghanistan. "I can't go alone to meet with my friends. I can't go shopping alone. I can't go do sports. I used to run with my father in the morning and I can't anymore."

In a refugee facility in France, Hassan, a student who made it out of Afghanistan on his own, said he never thought he would leave his country and worries about his future.

"When I came to France, I lost my hope. I was like, I'm nothing right now. I was studying, and here I have nothing. I don't even have a bachelor's degree." From his room at the facility, he continues with his classes online in hopes that he will be relocated to a university. While still a student in Kabul, he was working on developing a software that would make it easier for students to take classes from their phone. He worries that his family is in danger and that there is nothing he can do to help them.

Even as the students are spread across 28 countries, some still hope to see their futures in Afghanistan. Pashtana Dorani was evacuated to the U.S. in late October on a researcher visa. She is at Wellesley College in Massachusetts researching the impact of conflict on women's education while finishing her undergraduate degree.

In Afghanistan, she founded LEARN, a nonprofit focused on education, organizing projects around digital literacy and menstrual hygiene management. While grateful for the opportunity to be in the U.S., she maintains that she wants to take the skills she learns back to her home country when it feels safe.

"Staying in the U.S. is good, I'm grateful for the support I have right now, and I'm so grateful for all these amazing women around me," she said. "But at the end of the day, the heart is where home is. And home is Afghanistan."

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American University of Afghanistan's students are scattered all over the world, but their education continues - CBS News

THE BACKGROUND: For Afghanistan, 2021 was punctuated by the chaos of a U.S. withdrawal and an uncertain next chapter. The Taliban, who were unseated as the countrys rulers by a U.S.-led coalition after the 9/11 attacks 20 years ago, could not be stopped by a collapsing Afghan military and Western-backed government that fled. They quickly took power back in mid-August asked,The Associated Press has revealed, by former President Hamid Karzai to help keep Kabul from falling into chaos and deadly violence.

Four months into Taliban rule, Afghanistan isfacing a looming economic meltdownand humanitarian catastrophe. Billions of dollars worth of the countrys assets abroad, mostly in the U.S., have been frozen and international funding to the country has ceased.

The world is waiting before extending any formal recognition to the new rulers in Kabul, wary the Taliban could impose a similarly harsh regime as when they were in power 20 years ago despite their assurances to the contrary.

The Taliban urge patience but some signs are worrisome: For instance, girls are not allowed to attend high school in most provinces, and though women have returned to their jobs in much of the health care sector, many female civil servants have been barred from coming to work.

However, security has improved under the Taliban, following their crackdown on crime, and humanitarian organizations say they can now reach parts of the country that were previously no-go areas.

Here, Associated Press reporters who covered the Talibans lightning sweep across the country and the subsequent fallout reflect on the story and their own experiences.

FILE - A U.S. Chinook helicopter flies over the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, Aug. 15, 2021. Helicopters landed at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul as diplomatic vehicles left the compound amid the Taliban advance on the Afghan capital. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul, File)

Kathy Gannon, news director, Afghanistan and Pakistan:

This last year has been a particularly tumultuous one. It began really with the announcement by President (Joe) Biden that the last of the U.S. soldiers and NATOs soldiers would leave Afghanistan, but Im not sure that anyone thought that it would result in such chaos and such real misery for so many. ... Even Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, I think, was really taken by surprise that the Americans were leaving, that NATO would leave. I dont think that he ever felt that they would actually. And certainly we talked at the time to many people within the army, people within the government who were really surprised at the announcement. Even though the U.S. had been talking to the Taliban, had negotiated the agreement, had said that as of May 1st, they would begin this withdrawal, there really was a belief among many Afghans that it would not happen.

FILE - In this image provided by the U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. service members assigned to Joint Task Force-Crisis Response, are pallbearers on Friday, Aug. 27, 2021, for the service members killed in action during operations at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, as transfer cases are placed onto a U.S. Air Force C17A Globemaster III for the flight back to the United States. (1st Lt. Mark Andries/U.S. Marine Corps via AP, File)

Even before the Taliban took power, in 2018 there was a Gallup survey, and it showed that barely 2 percent of the population had any faith in their future in the next five years. And that was years before the Taliban took power. So the groundwork was already there. People were very frustrated. The poverty level was quite high already. There were very few jobs for people. People felt really discouraged with the future of their country.

So then when the Americans were leaving and then embassies were announcing they were going to close, it was almost like a snowball, gaining, gaining momentum. Rumors spread on social media that said, the Americans will take anybody who shows up at the airport. Just arrive. You dont even need to have your national papers. Well, for many Afghans, I think this was seen as their opportunity for a better life. Their opportunity to go to America, to go to the West, to have a future that they really had not seen as being a possibility in their own country even before the Taliban arrived.

And then, with the arrival of the Taliban, of course, there was tremendous apprehension and tremendous fear, particularly among the young generation who had not been there when the Taliban last ruled between 1996 and 2001. So I think that that all of that led to this massive surge toward the airport in Kabul, and no one was prepared for it.

And for me, in many ways, that really was a bit of an indictment of the last 20 years, that there was such a lack of hope and faith in the future. And the civil society, on whom so much faith had been put, seemed to be the first ones to make this rush to the airport because they feared for their lives, they feared for the future. They feared for the future of their children.

So that really contributed to that chaos in those iconic images of young men rushing the C-17 aircraft, hanging on to the wheels, trying to get into the aircraft. All of this uncertainty and fear contributed to that. And really the last 20 years, that didnt give them much hope for the future.

But I want to say there was no evidence from when the Taliban last ruled that there would be widespread retribution killings. Sadly, though, revenge killings have been a hallmark of every regime change in Afghanistan. There were scores of retribution killings when the Taliban were overthrown in 2001 by U.S.-backed Afghan allies, and human rights groups have reported upward of 80 revenge killings, particularly of former military people, by the returning Taliban rulers. However, until now there has been no evidence of systematic retribution.

The fact that the Taliban are here and that the world seems surprised seems a little bit in and of itself surprising, given that there were two years of negotiations with the Taliban, with the plan that at the end of these negotiations, there would be an agreement that would include them in power. And I think the future is still a mystery. The jury is still out on whether the Taliban will make good on some of their promises to guarantee education for girls. Whether they will open up their ranks, whether they will include more people. And I think that there still is not a clear picture of what that will look like. But what there is a clear picture of is that Afghans are desperate for help. The U.N. has said that 98 percent of Afghans by the end of this year will be in desperate need, and its still not clear that the world is ready to rise up to the occasion.

FILE - In this image provided by the U.S. Marine Corps, evacuees wait to board a Boeing C-17 Globemaster III during an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, Aug. 30. 2021. (Staff Sgt. Victor Mancilla/U.S. Marine Corps via AP, File)

Fazel Rahman, senior television producer, Afghanistan:

The biggest surprising and shocking moment for me this year came in the middle of night: Gunmen knocked on the AP bureaus door, looking for us and they were threatening us with death. But we were very, very lucky. Fortunately, they were not able to harm anyone. We dont know who they were. The Talibans spokesman Suhail Shaheen was notified right away about these people knocking at the AP door. Taliban officials within two days had come to the office, and after looking around, assured our AP people no one would or should enter our premises without our permission. Should anyone do that we were told to call the officials. We have certainly been cautious, but we have not had Taliban or others unlawfully enter our premises.

As an Afghan, I see my people losing their hopes. They lost the achievements of 20 years, two decades, overnight. You know, my daughter cannot go to school. My boys are leaving the house, and she is not able to.

Unfortunately, because the Taliban came to power again, you know its very difficult for them to leave again, at least for a short time. The good thing is, we have winter ahead of us, which is not usually a fighting time in Afghanistan. And I think we have chances of negotiation.

Originally posted here:
US withdrawal and Afghanistan's next chapter - Military Times

A British man is missing in Afghanistan after a report he has been detained by the Taliban. Grant Bailey was arrested in the Afghan capital, Kabul, where he has been working as a security consultant.

The arrest came during a Taliban security clampdown, according to the Daily Mirror.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office could not confirm his identity, but a spokesperson said: We are aware of the detention of a British national in Afghanistan and have been in touch with their family to support them.

Baileys work duties include liaising with the US state department on security-related issues. He was last heard from on Saturday after being arrested at gunpoint, a UK security source told the Mirror.

The Mirror quoted the source saying: We were quite surprised he went back to Kabul after the western withdrawal as the security situation there is obviously much worse.

Added to that, the Taliban government is making it very difficult for the few ex-pats working there, making it very difficult to travel. A lot of people are trying to get to the bottom of what has happened to him, where he is being held, and under what charges.

Bailey is believed to have returned to Kabul in September shortly after the Taliban took over and the US and UK forces withdrew amid chaotic scenes at Kabul airport. His employer has been contacted for comment.

Baileys arrest underlines the continuing risks facing the small number of westerners who continue to work in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, hundreds of Afghans who were previously employed by UK organisations, including former BBC staff and those who worked for the British Council and UK forces, have been forced into hiding since the Taliban took over.

Earlier this month, Joseph Seaton, the former British Council Afghanistan English manager, said of his former colleagues: These people are living in constant fear of their lives. They were contracted under a British government-funded scheme to teach English teachers British values of diversity, inclusion and equality, the values that the Taliban oppose. They were always told they were employees of the British government.

Since the Talibans takeover, the UN has warned that 23 million Afghans face hunger due to conflict, drought and an economic downturn.

In October, the World Food Programmes executive director, David Beasley, said: Afghanistan is now among the worlds worst humanitarian crises if not the worst and food security has all but collapsed.

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Briton missing in Afghanistan after reports of Taliban arrest - The Guardian