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KABUL, Afghanistan -- Raheem Rejaey was a drug addict for 17 years. He lived under bridges in Kabul or in the ruins of buildings. His clothes reeked. In his misery, he tried suicide several times, he said, once intentionally overdosing and lying unconscious in a street for two days, undiscovered.

So he can feel the pain of other addicts as he searches for them in the streets of the Afghan capital. Clean for six years, the 54-year-old Rejaey volunteers for the Bridge Hope Health Organization, a group made of up of former addicts like himself who help get care and counseling to drug users.

It is an overwhelming challenge: Afghanistan has one of the highest rates of drug use in the world, with an estimated 3 million addicts, around 10 percent of its population of 30 million. The government struggles to provide services, but cant keep up as the numbers of addicts grow in the country, which is the worlds main source of opium and heroin.

Authorities have established treatment centers, and police with health officials often round up addicts from the streets and bring them to the centers. Billions of dollars have been spent on counter-narcotics campaigns in the past decade, including encouraging poppy farmers to switch to other cash crops.

Still, officials say the number of drug users is growing. Most addicts come from the millions of Afghans who work in neighboring Iran and Pakistan, where narcotics are even more of a problem.

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Ninety percent of the world's opium originates in Afghanistan's poppy fields, much of it turned into heroin. Every year more Afghans are getting ...

The 10 volunteers at Bridge tour Kabul districts where addicts are most plentiful and provide basic help to 15-30 a day, such as counseling and referrals to drop-in centers where they can get screened for HIV. They often find old friends.

My health was really bad when I was an addict, I was hoping to die, Rejaey told The Associated Press. When I became healthy and gave up addiction, I decided to devote my life to serving these people, because ... I knew there is no one who will care for them.

The ranks of Afghanistans addicts include more than 1 million women and more than 100,000 children, said Abdul Manan Azadmanish, director of drug demand reduction for the Public Health Ministry.

It is a big disaster, he said, speaking at a Kabul rehabilitation center as police brought in several hundred addicts for treatment.

There are believed to be at least 40,000 intravenous drug users in Afghanistan, making them vulnerable to HIV and other infections. The U.N. estimates that around 7,000 people in the country live with HIV and believes the epidemic is mainly centered among those injecting drugs.

Non-governmental organizations are as overwhelmed as the government.

The Bridge organization has a very small budget. Its volunteers take public buses in their neighborhood tours to cut costs, Rejaey said.

An Afghan drug addict waits to receive first aid for his wounds from Bridge Hope Health Organization (BHHO) during a campaign to help drug users get care and counseling, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Dec. 21, 2016.

AP

Reza Gul Jan, another volunteer, became an addict while living in Iran. He stopped taking drugs six years ago and says his heart breaks when he now sees addicts. But a sense of humanity drives me to come here to help them, he said.

The Taliban, which have been waging war against the Afghan government since 2001, are heavily involved in poppy growing. The militants growing control over the poppy fields in the south meant government eradication efforts almost completely halted, while cultivation of the flower grew by 10 percent.

As a result, Afghanistans potential opium production increased 43 percent to 4,800 tons in 2016, according to Salamat Azimi, Afghanistans counter-narcotics minister.

Atiqullah, a 28-year-old in Kabul, was once a well digger with a decent salary. But over the course of 11 years of addiction, his life and health fell apart. He now lives under a bridge in western Kabul, unable to walk.

If I find money to buy food, I wont be able to buy drugs. If I have money for my drugs, I wont be able to have food, he said, weeping. I am tired of this life and even God is not ending my life so I can at least rest in peace.

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Ex-users try to help Afghanistan's 3 million drug addicts - CBS News

Forbes

The Nation-Building Experiment That Failed: Time For US To Leave Afghanistan Forbes America's longest war continues. The U.S. military has been fighting in Central Asia for more than 15 years. To what end? Perpetuate a corrupt, incompetent, and unpopular central government in Kabul without bolstering America's security. When asked at ...

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The Nation-Building Experiment That Failed: Time For US To Leave Afghanistan - Forbes

ISLAMABAD

Landlocked Afghanistan has used a regional summit to call on Pakistan to reopen formal border crossings between the two countries, saying barriers on trade, transit and the movement of people defy stated objectives of promoting economic cooperation among participating nations.

Islamabad, which hosted Wednesdays summit of the 10-nation Economic Cooperation Organization, or ECO, sealed all of the border two weeks ago, alleging militants planned and executed recent terrorist attacks across the country from Afghan soil.

Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Shaif chaired the meeting where the presidents of Iran and Turkey, as well as several Central Asian states, were also in attendance.

Billboards showing presidents of Azerbiajan, Kazakhstan and Turkey on a main highway to welcome them in Islamabad, Pakistan, Feb. 28, 2017.

Afghanistans ambassador to Pakistan, Hazrat Omer Zakhilwal, who represented his government at the conference, underscored the need for separating economics from politics to promote the ECO mission of regional connectivity for economic prosperity.

Consequences

They [border crossings with Pakistan] have now been closed for about two weeks, causing enormous hardship to ordinary people and damage to traders on both sides. We cannot be for regional connectivity if at the same time we continue to implement barriers to trade, transit and movement of people between us, he said.

FILE - Pakistanis rally at the closed Chaman border crossing between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Zakhil attended the conference as a special envoy of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.

Honorable Prime Minister of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, in the spirit of todays summit, it will be the right message if your excellency instruct the opening of our formal trade and transit routes between our two brotherly countries, Pakistan and Afghanistan, said Zakhilwal

Kabul rejects charges that anti-Pakistan militants are using Afghan soil for staging attacks in the neighboring country.

Mutual accusations

The Afghan government in turn has reiterated its long running allegations that Islamabad harbors sanctuaries and leaders of the Taliban waging a deadly insurgency in Afghanistan, charges Islamabad denies as baseless.

Mutual terrorism allegations have lately prevented the two uneasy neighbors from engaging in official talks to ease tensions.

Pakistan army spokesman, Major-General Asif Ghafoor, on Tuesday called on Afghan authorities to enhance security on their side of the border to prevent terrorist infiltrate into his country, insisting the border closure is not an "indefinite" measure.

FILE - Policemen stand guard at a courthouse after an attack by suicide bombers in Charsadda, Pakistan, Feb. 21, 2017.

"There are some things Afghanistan should be doing before the border reopens that can be decided through shared discussions, so that when the border reopens, no one from our side should be able to go there and no one from their side should be able to come here for terrorism."

Pakistani officials were hoping for the Afghan president to attend Wednesdays ECO summit and billboards displayed at the meeting included Ghani's picture along with other leaders.

But the rise in tensions prompted Ghani to skip the event and so did the Afghan foreign minister, who Pakistani officials say had confirmed his participation days before the summit.

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Landlocked Afghanistan Urges Pakistan to Open Borders - Voice of America

An Afghan security official at a checkpoint in Helmand on Tuesday, hours after the fatal attacks on police.

KABUL After 16 years, Afghanistans long war shows no sign of taking a day off, even in midwinter.

On Tuesday, 11 police officers were killed in a Taliban attack in the south, but that was only one in a long and not unusual series of assaults against Afghan security forces.

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In recent weeks, there have been several attacks in which two or three Afghan police officers were killed.

Last year, 10 police officers were killed in one attack, a few days after 17 were killed. On Jan. 31, the Taliban tunneled under an army post in Sangin district and blew up the facility, killing as many as 20 soldiers.

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On the face of it, no single attack was that significant in the context of Afghanistans long and drawn out conflict. But the steady accumulation of attacks is a relentless reminder of what it is to be a country torn by war.

Winter is no longer the total respite from fighting that it once was. Huge numbers of people are affected.

Just during January, 22,000 Afghans were displaced by conflict throughout the country, according to United Nations figures. In all of 2016, that figure was 600,000.

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The killings of the police officers on Tuesday took place in the southern province of Helmand, which has for the last year been the most violent place in Afghanistan.

The Taliban control most of the province, with the government holding on to the provincial capital and crucial strong points, often with the help of heavy US airstrikes.

In the attack, according to Gulai Khan, the police security chief for the province, the Taliban overran a police guard post on the outskirts of the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, after a heavy firefight, killing the 11 officers there. They blew up the post and took the victims weapons, he said.

Not far away, on Highway 1, which links Helmand to Kandahar, the second-largest city in Afghanistan, a police convoy on Tuesday struck a hidden roadside bomb that killed one policeman and wounded three others, according to Omar Zwak, the spokesman for the Helmand governor.

Highway 1 is a 1,400-mile-long ring road that circles Afghanistan and connects most of its major cities.

Built by Western donors at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, it is a vital commercial and strategic artery but one that has rarely been free of attacks along large stretches of its route.

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Taliban kill 11 police officers in southern Afghanistan - The Boston Globe

In a week that Netflix is using to unveil trailers for numerous high-profile original films, the streaming giant has released a teaser for War Machine, a wartime comedy whose cast contains an array of notable names, headlined by Brad Pitt. While fans of Tarantinos WWII apocrypha Inglourious Basterds will embrace the idea of Pitt once again playing a tough, gruff, though slightly askew military man, War Machine happens to be a satirical and quasi-biographical work based on a real life general who ran the Afghanistan War for two Presidents.

Indeed, War Machine is a thinly-veiled adaptation of the 2012 non-fiction book The Operators by Michael Hastings in which the journalist recounts his Afghanistan War embedment with the head of Joint Special Operations Command General Stanley McCrystal during early 2010. With the War Machine teaser trailer touching upon the quandaries that plagued U.S. forces during that war, Brad Pitts quasi-McCrystal General Dan McMahon is seen in defiantly sarcastic form as hes handed the baton for the Afghanistan War. While thats pretty much the extent of the brief clip, we can imagine that if the tenure of McMahon is anything like McCrystals, then it will be filled with triumph, tragedy and controversy, along with a few notably public spats with the executive branch.

War Machine also has quite the supporting cast, filled with known names like Tilda Swinton, Ben Kingsley, Scoot McNairy, Topher Grace, Anthony Michael Hall, Meg Tilly and Alan Ruck. The film also has up-and-coming young talent, as well. Will Poulter of The Revenant, Were the Millers and The Maze Runner, was also briefly cast as clown Pennywise in the It reboot before a major upheaval. RJ Cyler was co-star of the acclaimed dramedy Me and Earl and the Dying Girl and will play Blue Ranger Billy in Marchs Power Rangers reboot film. Lakeith Stanfield, who played a young Snoop Dogg in Straight Outta Compton and appears on FX series Atlanta, will also be seen in the upcoming live-action film adaptation of popular anime Death Note. Emory Cohen, formerly of TVs Smash, was seen in drama Brooklyn and on the recent Netflix sci-fi series The OA.

War Machine is mostly the brainchild of Aussie helmer David Michd, who wrote the script adapting Hastingss book and directed the film. Michds previous features include the 2014 Guy Pearce-starring crime drama The Rover, which he wrote based on a story from actor Joel Edgerton. Relevantly, the duo of Pearce and Edgerton were the featured stars in Michds 2010 directorial breakthrough in drama Animal Kingdom. Star Brad Pitt also serves as a producer on the film.

War Machine gets ready to see Brad Pitt somewhat channel the Nazi-killin memory of Lt. Aldo Raine as a rough-edged general whos been put in charge of one of Americas longest wars when the film debuts on Netflix on May 26.

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War Machine Trailer: Brad Pitt is a Gruff General in the Afghanistan War - Den of Geek US