Opium is ruining the lives of children in Afghanistan. Laura Davis speaks to the film-maker revealing the country’s other war

IRONICALLY, it is kindness that makes the women feed opium to their babies in this unfortunate country where beauty and pain seem intrinsically linked.

One is an elderly carpetmaker who took in an orphan boy despite struggling to feed herself. She dopes him so she has time to work.

The other has seen her other child die so clings to this one, medicating him with the drug so she won’t have to suffer his loss, too.

She is smoking as she cooks their meal and says, to the camera, “This is my destiny.”

“We thought it was a very poignant line – that it was her destiny to be suffering this much,” says Lucy Gordon, whose documentary, named after this phrase, is being shown at an international film festival held at FACT next week.

It focuses on the lives of three drug addicts in Afghanistan – two women and a former Presidential bodyguard.

“A lot of people there become addicts because they’re using it for psychological and physical pain,” explains Gordon.

“There’s no healthcare and for the women it’s particularly difficult because their husbands sometimes don’t let them see a doctor if the doctor is male.

“But opium is very cheap and easy to come by.”

Afghanistan produces 93% of the world’s opium and heroin, and profits from the trade are one of the main sources of funding for Taliban insurgents.

However, the impact is felt not only beyond the country’s borders – while much of the deadly crop is exported, some 200,000 Afghans have now also become addicts.

That many people living in the aftermath of war are likely to turn to drugs may come as no surprise, but the fact that they are feeding the opium to their children must shock even the most worldly-wise of us.

“When we were there, it was difficult to believe that we were looking at reality,” says Gordon, herself a mother of a six-month-old baby.

“It’s accepted as a common thing. In one community, women admit they are giving opium to their children to make them quiet so they are able to work.

“Another woman didn’t want her child to die and she felt that she should at least tried some sort of remedy when it’s ill, even if that’s opium.

“But then the child becomes addicted and it cries when it doesn’t get it so they end up in this vicious circle.

“There are rehabilitation centres but the country needs a lot, lot more, and if people had adequate healthcare and education then they wouldn’t need to be taking the opium in the first place.”

Gordon spent two years working in Afghanistan producing radio, theatre and television for social development and education with the charity Equal Access.

Creating This is My Destiny with an all-female production team, which included Afghan cinematographer Bahareh Hosseini, allowed them access into women’s homes.

“It was a difficult experience but we all felt extremely grateful to have seen the real side of life there and to have had the opportunity to sit down and talk to people,” she says.

“Through the prism of addiction, you hear a lot of other social problems people are experiencing.

“One of the most incredible things about it was that none of them had really talked about themselves or about their problems before and so what you get is a very fresh account.

“Quite often, they were relieved to be able to talk about it.”

Gordon initially planned for her documentary to be shown across the country to raise awareness of the detrimental affects of drug use, but it soon became apparent that this would put the lives of the people she interviewed at risk.

Instead, it will be screening in cities across the Western world, and is among a number of films to do with the war on drugs in the International Harm Reduction conference’s film festival.

Gordon hopes it will reveal a different side of Afghanistan to people accustomed to watching news reports from the country’s war zones.

“We’ve got soldiers fighting there and quite often the news is orientated only towards the fighting and people don’t really have an idea of what’s happening on the ground in normal communities,” she explains. “I hope they get more of an understanding of what people are going through in developing countries and about how it’s not just the West that is blighted with the problem of addiction.”

THE International Drugs and Harm Reduction Film Festival, at FACT, is open to the general public from April 26-27. Further details at www.ihra.net/liverpool/filmfestival. Read more about Equal Access at www.equalaccess.org