translated from Spanish: Yaba, synthetic (and very inexpensive) drug that shocked a country

Hundreds of thousands of people in Bangladesh have become addicted to yaba, a mixture of methamphetamine and caffeine which is sold cheap in the form of red or pink pills.
The response of the authorities has been fierce, with hundreds of people killed in alleged incidents of “cross-fire”.
“Kept me awake for seven, eight, ten days at a time. Yaba it consumed in the morning, afternoon, evening and until entry overnight. It worked until dawn without going to bed”.
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Mohamed was an addict. After being awake for so long it was exhausted.
“He lost the knowledge. Completely out of action. After two or three days, I woke up, ate, and again I was going to bed. But, if I had yaba, consuming it. If you have only one pill, surely that you takes it”.
Mohammed addiction to yaba began to work in the capital, Dhaka.
“We had a business of importing with Japan, so we had to work during the night by the time difference. One of my colleagues told me about yaba. “I said that if you took it would help me to keep me awake, have more energy and work hard in the morning and late at night”.
At the beginning, Mohamed experienced the benefits that his colleague described him. But not for long. Mohamed started to behave erratically and almost had a total collapse.
“In the early stages of yaba consumption there are many positive effects. Everything is highlighted with yaba”, says Dr. Ashique Selim, psychiatrist specializing in addiction.
“You become more sociable… You can enjoy more music, cigarettes and sex. In Bangladesh, there is a very unhealthy relationship between sex and yaba. You stay awake for longer, you have more energy, you feel more confident. If you stop eating yaba, there are no symptoms of abstinence, it’s not like alcohol or heroin. But the effects of yaba are who are really addictive. “It is a drug very, very dangerous”.
Yaba appeared for the first time in Bangladesh in 2002 and their use and abuse has increased continuously since then.
It is produced illegally in industrial quantities in Myanmar (Burma), where trafficked to Bangladesh by the remote South-Eastern part of the country, where the border follows partially the Naf River.
It was through this river that hundreds of thousands of desperate refugees Rohingyas fled to Bangladesh in 2017 fleeing Burmese army.
Now, almost a million homeless refugees living in camps, improvised in that region, and traffickers have managed to transform some on mules – often women-carrying bags of pills hidden inside their vaginas.
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Experts suspect that traffickers have found a business opportunity that cannot take advantage of.
It is a time of rapid growth and Bangladesh is one of the most dynamic in the world economies, so traffickers are introducing large amounts of yaba and selling them cheap to create a captive market.
Anecdotally, it seems that consumption is more prevalent among the generation of ambitious entrepreneurs who are benefiting from the economic boom.
“I was completely dependent,” recalls Mohamed.
His spouse, Nusrat, who then took care of a newborn baby, says that his behaviour became increasingly more unpredictable.
Mohammed and his spouse Nusrat.” I used to get home and blame me for everything in terms of food, friends, my work… That was very unusual and is not like it is in fact”, he explains.
After yaba pills he found in the House, he decided to confront Mohamed in the regard.
“Yelled at me. I tried to convince to seek some type of treatment, but remained in denial about it. He said, ‘don’t you trust me, you want to go with another, you want to separate you from me’. I had a hard time. And, at the same time, I knew that I could do anything–even kill us.”
According to psychiatrist Ashique Selim, yaba plays a unique role in Bangladesh, a nation where alcohol is not freely available and drink frequently seen with disapproval.
“I got a patient who had a fairly conventional life. His parents were very conservative. So when his friends went out to take a couple of beers, he could do it because he did not want to return home smelling of drink. Then, in their 30s, he stumbled upon yaba. There was no visual changes in appearance and there was no smell whatsoever. And when consuming small doses not suffered effects the next day.”
Police detain the motorcycle taxis near the bazaar of Cox.Pero consumers have problems trying to keep the habit in the purely recreational aspect.
And is the wide availability of the drug, and the chaos that is causing, which has led the Government of Bangladesh to harden the punishment against the possession of yaba and declare a “zero tolerance” policy, a measure that some allege includes summary executions by the forces of order.
“He was returning from the mosque, when I saw a number of policemen outside my door,” recalls Abdur Rahman, who lives in Teknaf, a town at the heart of the southeastern district Cox’s Bazar yaba trade.
“They entered my house and found my son, Abul Kalam, in the bathroom.” They seized him and handcuffed him. I asked them: ‘ Please, release it, what has done?’. The policeman replied: ‘If you keep talking, you are going to shoot’ “.”
Abul Kalam had just turned a jail sentence for human trafficking, not drug. He was detained at the police station for five days until his father received very bad news.
Abdur Rahman.” The police told me that my son had died in a shootout,”he has.
Abul Kalam died on January 9, at some distance from the police station, in what police described as a crossfire incident. Media reported that another man died beside him, and that 20,000 tablets of yaba and five weapons were recovered at the scene of the crime”.
A human rights organization estimated that in 2018, in the first seven months of the anti-drug operations of the Government, nearly 300 people died in Bangladesh.
The local press often write the words “cross-fire”, in quotation marks, to reflect the wide suspicion that these armed sometimes confrontations are assemblies.
But the Superintendent of the police, to B M Masud Hossain, denies that there is a policy of shoot-to-kill against those suspected of being in the trafficking of yaba.
How, then, explains the circumstances surrounding the death of Abul Kalam?
“Sometimes, when we go out on operations, we face yaba dealers. I think that was one of those incidents,”he expressed.
“Once we arrest someone we took him to the police station. Then, after collecting information during the interrogation, we started the operation. So, when we got to the criminals, sometimes faced police with weapons. So, perhaps he died at that moment.”
“I can assure you that there is a list of cross-fire”, said the Police Superintendent, to B M Masud Hossain.ademas has an explanation of why it is given that all these deaths always seem to follow the same pattern.
“It may be that this is the same stories, but the incidents always occur as well.” So what it would tell another story? “.”
In February, the Superintendent organized a special public event in Teknaf. In a carnival atmosphere, against a crowd of thousands, 102 villagers men – all suspected trafficking of yaba – surrendered to the authorities.
Among them were the relatives of a local parliamentarian of the ruling Awami League, and other elected officials. 30 weapons and packages containing 350,000 yaba tablets were displayed ceremonially.
The men who had surrendered were lined in a row against a podium adorned with flowers, where the Minister of Interior, Assaduzaman Kahn, handed each a gladiolus.
“The whole country is awash with yaba, up to school and university students depend on it,” said the Minister.
In a carnival atmosphere, 102 men surrender to the authorities in Teknaf.Luego went to the men who had surrendered and that, even today, are still imprisoned.
“His mere presence today is warranty for all of us that we shall be able to eradicate the yaba Teknaf and the rest of the country.”
It sounded as if those suspected of trafficking with yaba had surrendered voluntarily. But a man denounced his brother Shawkat Alam, surrendered only because he feared for his life.
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“The police made a list of all the people who were going to be in the cross-fire, or something like that,” says Mohamed Alamgir. “And when my brother learned of that, he was so frightened that he gave.”
Superintendent of police to B M Masud Hossain rejected the accusation that applied them pressure.
“I can assure you that there is a list. Always we try to arrest them”.
It adds that, since the surrender of February, trafficking of yaba in Cox’s Bazar district has declined almost 70%.
A border guard is a bus near Teknaf.En 2018 yaba, Bangladesh authorities seized 53 million tablets of yaba throughout the country. The total value of this illegal trade is estimated at more than $1,000 billion per year.
There are no reliable data on the number of people addicted to drugs in Bangladesh. The Department of Control of Narcotics (DCN) estimates that there are four million addicts, but NGOs cthat figure nearly seven million olocan. Of those, it is believed that nearly one-third used yaba.
The euphoric effects of Mohamed yaba soon turned in negative episodes.
“I was constantly confused and felt that someone listened to me, someone I watched.”
Paranoia is not something unusual among those who consume yaba.
As his life became uncontrolled, Mohamed was taken forcibly to a rehabilitation center in middle of the night by strangers hired by his family.
It was traumatic, but feels grateful now. He spent four months in treatment and has been alajado of the drug for more than one year. Also serves in the same clinic volunteer, partly to avoid a relapse.
“Now, I think that you are ready to get a job,” says Nusrat, his spouse. “But I never pushed him. If it says you need help, here are all for it.”
Mohammed and Nusrat.La Mohamed addiction to yaba put deeply to test the relationship of this couple.
“But our ties have been strengthened,” says Nusrat. Mohamed is agreed.
“I have more faith in it. I know that I will not give up! “, he says.

Original source in Spanish