man what a sad story. 
What next in this crazy world. No rehabiliation centre in the Khurasan camp (in Peshawar) - how much $$$ would it take an Arab sheikh/emir to construct a treatment centre for opium-affected patients in this part of the world? Maybe less money than their next skiing trip to Europe with their mistresses.
The children are given opium by their parents in order to stop them from “going out and begging on the streets”, and parents take it in order to gain “impetus to work more and avoid getting bored.”
Opium pacifies Afghan refugee children, Rifatullah Orakzai, BBC, 1 July 2003
Children growing up in refugee camps in Peshawar, in the north of Pakistan, are being drugged by their parents to leave themselves free to work undisturbed in the carpet factories.
The Afghan men and women, eager to not lose out on the sole source of income in the camps, dip their fingers in a pot of opium to feed their children before a day’s work.
“I know this is very dangerous and can have bad effects on the health of our children, but how can we abandon carpet weaving as this is our only source of income?” said Mallaley, one of the women carpet weavers.
She said that her husband left for Afghanistan a week before to repair their home destroyed by decades long war and fighting. “We are not happy in Pakistan and want to shift to our homeland,” she said. “In absence of my husband we have no other option to work in a carpet unit for survival and to feed our family and children,” she said.
“Opium eating keep us impetus to work more and avoid getting bored.”
The refugee camps in Peshawar were mostly set up for hundreds of fleeing Afghan families in the 1980s after the former USSR invaded Afghanistan.
Afghan refugee Altaf Khan, who has been living in the camp since 1983, says the use of opium is reluctant but it stops the children going out and begging on the streets. He said 90% of the 1,800 refugees in Khurasan refugee camp work in carpet knitting. “Most of them are men and women who either work on lease or have established their own small units inside their houses,” he said.
Carpet weaving is slow and time-consuming work. An average carpet is prepared in a month or longer, even with two or three weavers working a rotation of eight hour shifts. The men and women are paid between $30 and $40 for knitting one metre of carpet. It is hard for someone to weave that length in a week even working every day from early morning till evening without any break.
“Both women and men are involved in taking drug during working hours as it increases ability to work more,” said Abdul Rub, an ethnic Pashtoon who is also Commandant of the camp. He said that 60% of the Turkmen who are connected with weaving business in the camp have been addicted to opium and it is not considered harmful as father and son eat it together.
“The addicts used to bring opium from Afghanistan where it is easily available, but it can be obtained from Pakistani cities as opium poppies are still produced in tribal territories bordering with Afghanistan,” Mr Rub added. There is little intervention from the authorities to stop the cycle of opium addiction in the camps.
Afghan refugee Meer Muhammad, 35, who runs a small carpet-weaving unit, said: “We are anxious about the future of our young people, but why would we opt for opium eating if there was peace in our own country?”
However, Mr Muhammad admitted he was already addicted to opium when he migrated to Pakistan along with his family in 1980. “When you eat opium, you don’t become tired, and you can work late into the night,” he said.
There are few non-governmental organisations (NGO) or other welfare institutions working to help rehabilitate addicts in the Khurasan camp or in other parts of Peshawar.
Afghan doctor Tariq Suleman runs the Nijat Centre for the treatment of opium-affected patients which is 10 kilometres from the camp.
“We are trying our utmost to work for rehabilitation of addicted Afghans but the menace cannot be eradicated completely unless there is a planned program for controlling opium production in Afghanistan and Pakistan,” he said.