At 15, Shiny was the brightest student and scored straight A’s in her O-Level Examinations. Her parents were busy doctors minting a fortune and wanted her to score straight A’s in A-Levels to join a medical college in the UK. Pressures on her to perform were very high and parental care nonexistent. Browsing on the internet, she found names of anti-sleeping pills to stay awake. She used them, but fell into a depression. Within a year through friends on Facebook, she progressed to charas, heroin injections and amphetamines. Her parents, too busy with their routine, attributed dark circles around her eyes and loss of hair to over work, but never bothered to check her arms for punctures. She fell back in class and died of drug overdose before she was 17.
Adnan’s mother is a widow with two sons and a daughter. She has worked hard to educate her two elder children who are now employed aboard with hefty salaries. Five years ago, they moved to Baharia Town. With no supervision, Adnan got hooked to sheesha, hash and ecstasy. He started becoming violent and would often injure himself or cut his wrists. He was expelled from the college. He reacted by bringing gangsters outside the schools and colleges where his friends studied and involved in fights with firearms. He has abandoned education and operates a gang of drug addicts, who are involved in fights outside schools and colleges. The mother, who once defended him stoutly, is now helpless. For Adnan, it is a matter of time.
Meena is a foreign educated business developer. Working in a BPO, she got hooked on to drugs through young executives working at night at call centres. Out of job due to drug abuse, she now heads a gang of young addicts and peddles for the elites of Islamabad and Bharia in heroin and crack. Two of her friends have died of overdose.
These are alarming events and tip of the iceberg. It is a devil that haunts the urban elite education centres and call centres where youngsters are vulnerable and the nouveaux riches, who have no time for their children.
A decade back, hash and heroin was deemed to be a poor man’s refuge due to the prohibitive cost of imported liquor. However, the trends are now changing. Hash, heroin, amphetamines, hallucinogens, ecstasy and Ketamine compounds have proliferated into the urban elites of Pakistan. The route of entry is invariably private education institutions and BPOs operating night shift of youngsters, who attend school or college at day. Invariably, it always begins with efforts to keep awake and ends in tragedy. Outside the premises of these institutions, peddlers and criminals operate with impunity to befriend new customers. Rave parties, dancing events and attractive satanic captions splash pages on the social media. Sheesha centres in urban malls and posh localities located in farm houses are the high points of the nouveaux riches addicts where ecstasy, syringes and crack are a token of status. Once hooked there is no return.
Pakistan’s drug statistics are shocking. According to one report, over eight million Pakistanis are using drugs. The numbers are likely to touch 15 million in the next few years. Over 57 percent amongst these use heroin. According to another report amongst the women, 47 percent are college or university educated professionals. Nearly half of all urban addicts are school/college going students studying in private institutions and live in posh upcoming housings. According to DG Narcotics, private educational institutions are more vulnerable than the government educational institutions to attract the students towards drug addiction, mainly because the elites can spend more. He also expressed the opinion that addiction rate was proportional to tuition rates, where both parents were working and where parents don’t have enough time for their children. The drug of choice for the rich urban elites is not heroin but crack, a derivative of cocaine traded in dollars and euros.
Private education institutions from schools to universities have failed to check this rising menace within and outside their bounds. Most hostels of boys and girls also have dens from where this trade is run. In hostels, students experiment with chemicals to manufacture stimulants and hallucinogens in which Ephedrine and Ketamine are the basic drugs of choice. Recently, a hostel in Islamabad was found to be both a drug and prostitution den. In street corners, Garda, a lethal mix of tobacco, charas and stimulants in readymade cigarette rolls is available to anyone across the counters; usually the high school students.
In Pakistan’s urban centres, no one seems willing to take on the challenge. The district and municipal administrations despite tremendous civic powers at their disposal prefer looking the other way. Action by police is usually to extort more money from the peddlers and addicts. Private educational institutions in their desire to earn money prefer to keep their eyes closed, even to galas and dinners held in their own premises. Academicians lack the administrative fist and the leader’s prowess to deter, cajole or convince students. Nobody cares to inspect the hostel premises or why students have dropped semesters. Tutorial and social care groups are nonexistent. Visiting faculties consider having their hands washed of all responsibility and accountability. Cases instead of being reported to police and ANF are hushed up by disciplinary committees. There is a total absence of any dissuasive or punitive policy.
The time for holding ceremonial seminars on drug abuse as a compulsive expenditure should now be over. It is time to act. Detecting and preventing drug abuse is a social, civic and collective responsibility and not confined to police and ANF. Urban administrators, cantonment boards, institutional administrations and civil society groups need to wake up to this challenge and evolve aggressive action plans to combat this menace before we lose more youngsters to this social evil.
The writer is a retired officer of Pakistan Army and a political economist.
Email: samson.sharaf@gmail.com
Islamabad: The country’s capital Islamabad, has become a hub of drug addicts.
Saach.TV, after receiving complaints from the people, visited several areas and found shocking incidents that involve also the premises of a fast-food chain. The areas also include parking lots.
Youth of Islamabad often come around here to enjoy their evenings and conduct social gatherings.
However, this recreation now involves drug use, besides sale and purchase.
A visit by the scribe revealed the amount of drug consumption in the parking lot as well as the adjacent park near the restaurant.
Unfortunately, there are no checks and balances, though there are check posts of police round these corners.
There is no police present inside the premises as the restaurant has its own security outside to inspect the vehicles for any security-threatening object.
Such activities are also taking part in different areas of Islamabad including prominent universities.
A student of Quaid-e-Azam University disclosed to the scribe that weed is very much open in university premises and there is no check from the police.
An ex-addict told the scribe that the weed is easily available in Islamabad. He said, “Mostly people take drugs to relax themselves. The culture has been imported from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and most of the weed comes from that place.”
Talking about the suppliers of weed, he said, “The suppliers of weed are easily available at different places and they work on a small scale. Main handlers of the suppliers operate from Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.”
Giving his expert opinion on the matter, Dr. Wahab Yusufzai, a Consultant Psychiatrist and Assistant Professor at Shifa College of Medicine told Saach.TV that it is very unfortunate that this epidemic has spread in our society.
He praised the role of media in identifying the issue and urged the government to run an awareness campaign.
He strictly criticized the increasing culture of Sheesha among the youth and termed it as a catalyst to take youth at the verge of drugs.
Talking about the technicalities and solutions to eradicate this menace from the society, he emphasized, “Police has to take measure in controlling the supply and trafficking being done. Stopping the supply will surely decrease the addiction.”
He also asked the parents and universities to play their part in monitoring the youth. He said, “There should be a strong liaison among the parents and teachers and they should keep a watchful eye over the children. Parents must scrutinize the behaviour of children and also put a full stop on the increasing habit of youth to stay awake at night and sleep all day.”
Saach.TV tried to contact the Inspector General of Police, Islamabad but he was unavailable. His Public Relations Officer (PRO) said, “Islamabad Police has been cracking down on these elements daily and it is evident from their daily press releases.”
– See more at: http://www.saach.tv/2012/05/18/islamabad-an-easy-drug-place/#sthash.2VrHmAUd.dpuf
Who is this Pakistani Spy?
About two years ago, a British military attaché in Islamabad was dismissed after he “lost the confidence of the British High Commission” following what London called his “inappropriate relationship” with a Pakistani female ‘spy’.
Brigadier Andrew Durcan, 56, was recalled in January 2007.
All hell broke loose after Aroosa Alam of an Islamabad daily, Pakistan Observer, ventured with what she claimed was an expose on how the drama involving the British military attachÈ and the female spy played out.
Alam pointed to a certain research fellow, who happens to work for the ISS as the spy in question. This infuriated Dr Shireen Mazari, the ISS boss, who then went to town with a rejoinder that attempted to cut Alam down to size, but which in turn, drew the fury of the offended daily. Credibility was at stake, after all.
It is no secret that in diplomatic missions, some officials serve time for work other than their stated job-description. It is quite probable that Brigadier Durcan had a few skeletons in his cupboard, which is, in part explained by his rather secretive dismissal following a “loss of confidence” at the High Commission. Islamabad’s statement that it was never informed of the decision is, again, a pointer.
British Ministry of Defence, which seconds senior officers to the Foreign Office as military attaches in embassies around the world, confirmed the dismissal but declined to discuss the disgraced official’s future postings or whereabouts.
“The High Commissioner in Islamabad considered his platonic friendship with a Pakistani national inappropriate and, as a result, lost confidence in him. He has been investigated and cleared over potential breaches of security,” is what a statement from the ministry said following the revelation.
The married Durcan is a former commander of the Gordon Highlanders, 52nd Lowland Brigade and deputy inspector-general of the Territorial Army. He was nicknamed “the tartan barrel” by officers under his command in Scotland because of his girth.
But to most Pakistanis, it is the alleged involvement of their compatriot, a female at that, which is the most intriguing element of the soap opera.
Aroosa Alam, the daredevil reporter, decided to put them out of their misery with this expose:
“Careful and thorough investigation and a number of background interviews with military diplomats close to Brigadier Durcan revealed that a research fellow from Institute of Strategic Studies is the lady behind the whole affair.
“Holding dual nationality, one Pakistani and other British, Ms M K, has been associated with the Institute for many years. She deals with a number of defence-related issues and has written many research papers particularly on conflict resolution, non-proliferation, and EU.
“She frequently travelled between England and Pakistan. In Pakistan, she sought many interviews with various high-level defence officials even in Pakistani military hierarchy. She came under suspicion by M16 undercovers in Islamabad mission when she sought interviews with defence officials of the High Commission to be used in her research papers.
“According to sources, she would ask some very pointed and pertinent questions. But when she went back she never used these interviews and wrote nothing on these issues. Intelligence authorities in the High Commission were then alarmed and started suspecting that these questions were asked by her for not her own research papers but for the consumption of some one else. This was some time last fall. The girl and the Brigadier were monitored. Phones were bugged. Even the room and the house of the British Military Attache were bugged.
“Some sources claimed that some filming was also done to prepare incriminating evidence. Both were also spotted intimately together at some social functions. Sources claimed that the Brigadier also travelled to England many times to spend time with her and his engagements in England were also watched and closely monitored.
“A team arrived from London in early January this year after Christmas holidays and the Brigadier was confronted for the first time about the status of his relations with the young lady. He was asked to report back to London where, according to sources, he appeared before a three-member military tribunal along with the internal inquiry report, and evidence based on phonic conversations and perhaps with some pictures”.
Aroosa Alam drew a swift riposte from Mazari, who called a press conference the very next day, refuting the allegations point-by-point. She said although the research fellow mentioned in Alam’s report did work for ISS, all references to her subordinate’s name – right from the work specifics to foreign travel and dangerous liaisons with the disgraced British official – were factually wrong.
Mazari was clinical in her assertion and rounded off the rearguard by demanding an apology from both the reporter and her paper, failing which she threatened to seek legal redress.
However, her charge that the paper was undermining national interests and becoming a tool for vested interests, drew a scathing rejoinder from the paper, which made no secret of its displeasure by stating that it did not need a sermon from someone under the microscope.
In fact, it went on to suggest that it had done a favour to Mazari by publishing what it did since that “put an end to wild guesses being made in the city about some of the known media-related female academics, including Dr Mazari herself, for being the lady in question”.
The prime time battle was apparently, won by Mazari, when the paper finally, issued a front-paged “clarification” by its editor, regretting the “inadvertent” nomination of the ‘spy’ (MK) in the story, which it denied was true.
It has now emerged that the alleged ‘spy’ is, indeed, not the one named in Alam’s controversial story but someone else. However, some contents of her story, apparently, do hold ground.
For instance, the incriminating evidence one got to see clearly belies London’s claim that its official did not have the kind of relations with the ‘spy’ that a certain Bill Clinton allegedly had with the most known intern in history.
Pakistan has a history of developing missiles intended to be used with their nuclear weapons. This report (caution, it is old and dates from 1999 and quotes material from the Rumsfeld Commision) is interesting for where it states that M-11 missiles from China were seen:
