Laila Haidari set up Kabul's first independent drug rehabilitation centre in 2010. Having helped her own brother to quit his heroin addiction she wanted to help others. More than 80% of the world's illegal opium and heroin comes from Afghanistan. International criminal groups have exploited years of warfare and lawlessness to expand production, but the insecurity has also led to poverty and increased drug addiction inside Afghanistan. Laila Haidari explains to Rebecca Kesby how local people have been affected. (PHOTO: An Afghan farmer harvests opium sap from a poppy field in the Surkh Rod district of Nangarhar province in 2018. The US government has spent billions of dollars on a war to eliminate drugs from Afghanistan, but the country still remains the world's top opium producer. (Credit NOORULLAH SHIRZADA/AFP via Getty Images)
Om Podcasten
Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there.
For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more.
Recent episodes explore everything from the death of Adolf Hitler, the first spacewalk and the making of the movie Jaws, to celebrity tortoise Lonesome George, the Kobe earthquake and the invention of superglue.
We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: Eva Peron – Argentina’s Evita; President Ronald Reagan and his famous ‘tear down this wall’ speech; Thomas Keneally on why he wrote Schindler’s List; and Jacques Derrida, France’s ‘rock star’ philosopher.
You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the civil rights swimming protest, the disastrous D-Day rehearsal, and the death of one of the world’s oldest languages.