Few Choices for Helmand's Troubled Youth

For 19-year-old Jaan Agha from Nawa district, the choice was stark - join the Taleban or watch his family starve.



"I couldn’t find a job anywhere,” he said. “So I had to join the Taleban. They give me money for my family expenditures. If I left the Taleban, what else could I do?”



Agha, who has not been to school, has only basic skills.

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“I am not educated, so it’s hard to find a job, although a lot of educated people are also unemployed nowadays,” he said.



In the southern province of Helmand, the drug industry and the Taleban seem to be the only career choices currently on offer to young men.



As schools close because of the unstable security situation, university is a dim hope for most. With unemployment at over 50 per cent, thousands of young people are unemployed and disaffected, while surrounded by a booming opium trade and a growing insurgency.



While the Taleban do not offer a fixed pay scale, those who work with the insurgents are given basic expenses covering such items as food, clothing, medical care, transport and communication. Many see it as their only choice.



Twenty-two-year-old Mahmud from Lashkar Gah joined the Taleban when he could find no other source of income.



"I fought for the Taleban for two years because I had no other job,” he said.



Joining the Taleban gave Mahmud a chance to save up enough money to start his own small business. Nowadays, he buys goods in the provincial capital Lashkar Gah and sells them in the districts at weekly “mila” or markets.



“Now that I have work, I am not with the Taleban any more.”



Helmand’s young men face real problems when they want to get married. In Afghanistan, a bridegroom traditionally presents a large sum of cash – called a “walwar” - to his bride's family. In this poppy-rich province, which supplies half of the world’s opium, it can cost up to 20,000 US dollars to arrange a wedding.



The “best” girls command a high walwar and men who are not actively involved in the booming drugs trade have to compete with those whose pockets are swollen with poppy proceeds.



Some say their inability to raise the walwar through legitimate means has led them into a life of crime.



“I was engaged for eight years,” said Torjan, 28, a resident of Nadali district. “Then my bride’s father doubled the price we had agreed on. I joined the Afghan National Army, but then I began to receive death threats from the Taleban. So then I joined them.”



However, on discovering that the Taleban’s pay scale was not high enough to allow him to pay the new, inflated walwar, Torjan has now turned to Helmand’s other growth industry.



“I have decided to start smuggling drugs,” he said.



Noorullah, 22, of Greshk district, made the same choice, but then things went terribly wrong.



"When I was running an opium shop, I had a lot of money. I got engaged by promising to give one million Pakistani rupees [16,000 USD] as walwar. But then the government seized all my opium, and now I’m in debt to a lot of people,” he said angrily.



“I have no money now to get married and am very tired of life. I have no way of making money other than robbing people.”



The lack of services and employment for youth is also blamed for escalating drug abuse, perhaps unsurprising in the world’s opium capital.



Obaidullah, a 19-year-old from Marja district, said he turned to drugs because he had little else to do.



“There was no place for me to go for entertainment,” he said, sounding disoriented. “I did not want to talk to anyone. I first started smoking cigarettes, but then that was not enough. I then began to smoke hashish, then opium. Now even that doesn’t help, and I am using heroin.”



There are about 75,000 drug addicts in Helmand province, according to Rahmatullah Mohammadi, head of the Mohammadi Nijat hospital, a treatment facility in Lashkar Gah.



About 40,000 of them, or over half, are between the ages of 15 and 25.



The Mohammadi Nijat facility, which cost 16,000 dollars to set up, has 20 beds available for addicts – but treatment comes at a price.



“We treat one addict within a month, and they have to pay 10,000 afghanis [200 dollars] as a fee for the treatment,” said Mohammadi.



Another 20 beds are available for addicts at the Wadan hospital.



After ten days in treatment, Bismillah, an addict from Musa Qala district, is showing some signs of recovery already.



"I got addicted to narcotics when I was harvesting poppy paste from our farmland along with my brothers and other labourers,” he explained.



Mohammad Nadir Watanwal, head of Helmand’s labour and social affairs department, said there are not enough jobs for all the people flocking to Lashkar Gah.



"A lot of people, in particular the young, have headed from the districts to Lashkar Gah city because of the bad security situation, and this has created problems with employment opportunities for the province’s youth,” he said.



Watanwal added that his department had referred 180 high school graduates to government offices for employment, while a further 60 have been receiving vocational training, including in car mechanics, wiring and carpentry.



Compounding the unemployment problem is a lack of educational opportunities, according to some high school graduates.



This past year, over 300 high school graduates are thought to have taken the university entrance exams which are standardised across Afghanistan. Not one of them passed.



While many attribute this to a low-level of schooling in the province, embittered Helmandis feel that they are being discriminated against.



Wahidullah, 22, said he is one of many young people who have tried unsuccessfully to get into university.



“If the situation continues like this in Helmand, I think there will be no engineers, judges, doctors and so on from this province,” said Wahidullah, who has tried unsuccessfully to get into university. “Young people fail the exam every year, and no one is going to university.”



Zia, 24, said he sat the entrance exam twice, but has still not gained a university place.



“In Helmand, one can get into higher education only by having a lot of money or by knowing high-ranking government officials,” he said. “And those are two things I don’t have.”



IWPR is implementing a journalism training and reporting project in Helmand. This article is by one of the trainees, whose name has been withheld for security reasons.