GOD, HEROIN AND THE TALIBAN

As The Faithful Gather To Pray In Pakistan, Miro Cernetig Meets An Addict
With A Forbidden Tale

PESHAWAR, PAKISTAN -- His eyes are as yellow as egg yolks, his arms have
open sores that draw hungry flies and his legs are too thin to carry him
home to Afghanistan. Yet Altanlah Khan smiles dreamily, as heroin addicts
so often do, and thanks the Taliban for his daily dose.

"Taliban sell the heroin to us," he says, gesturing toward the dusty road
that leads to a steel gate, beyond which lies the Khyber Pass, the storied
route into Afghanistan and the planet's most prolific poppy fields. "We are
still buying the drugs from the Taliban. There is no change in that."

With two fellow addicts, Mr. Khan sits on the ground across from a mosque
when the sun dips, as he does every day in this city near the Afghan border.

The late afternoon prayers begin, drawing hundreds of men who put mats by
the open sewers, drop to their knees and bow their heads toward Mecca.
"Allahu akbar" -- God is great -- drifts out of rusty speakers atop the
mosque's minaret. But it is heroin, not God, that has hold of Mr. Khan.

He is splayed on a patch of grass, waiting for the prayers to end and
hoping the men soon would roll up their prayer mats, take pity and drop a
few rupees as they walk by.

It costs as little as 30 rupees, the equivalent of 50 cents, for a heroin
hit, and Mr. Khan needs at least three a day.

This day, however, when he is overheard telling strangers that the Taliban
sell him his drugs, it is rage rather than rupees that fall his way.

"Why are you saying you get these drugs from the Taliban? Do not tell this
to these foreigners," says a man in a white robe, growing angrier as Mr.
Khan insists that the "students of Islam" -- the Taliban -- sell drugs to
the poor.

"Be silent!" the man yells. "Do not speak of this!"

"It is the truth," he fires back, waving his hands. "It is Muslims who are
selling this drug to other Muslims. The Taliban are no different."

Before the bombings, the Taliban warned they would retaliate against an
invasion by exporting more heroin, to spread misery to the West.

"Taliban have recently announced [they will] allow the people to cultivate
[poppies] on their land if America attacks them," Islamabad's The News
says. "Afghans, who had a huge quantity of stored opium, are trying to sell
their stock."

But the misery of the poppies hits Pakistan first, not the United States.
There are believed to be 1.5 million heroin addicts in this nation of 150
million, making it the most heroin-ravaged country in the world. Another
two million Pakistanis are addicted to opium and hashish, according to
estimates by aid workers.

There are no official statistics. But walk the streets of Peshawar, the
ancient trading town by the border, and there is no doubt the level of
addiction is horrendous.

In front of Federal Girls School No. 1, a man in his 20s -- who weighs
barely 80 pounds -- is prostrate near the gutter, oblivious to the mule
carts that clack by. Wasted to a skeleton, he is dying. But people step
over and around him, rarely throwing rupees into his only possession, a
steel pot.

On University Avenue, another old man sits under a tree, staring into
space. His robe is in tatters and one arm is in a sling, mangled by a car
accident. He reaches out his other palm, stained yellow by what is called
panni, the practice of heating heroin on a piece of foil and inhaling the
fumes with a pipe.

Such scenes are ages old in Peshawar. Heroin has always been part of the
smuggling trade across the Khyber Pass, filling the pockets of warlords and
traders since the days of Marco Polo.

But the problem has worsened with the rise of Islamic extremism.

Twenty years ago, Pakistan's military dictator, General Mohammed Zia
ul-Haq, tried to win over Muslim militants by showing he was devout. He
made the drinking of alcohol a crime that carried the possibility of jail
and flogging. But there is nothing specific in the Koran about drugs, and
that caused many addicts to switch from expensive alcohol to the cheap
heroin that flowed in from Afghanistan.

"We know alcohol is forbidden," says Amir Shah, a hotel worker who smokes
opium once a month. "But the poppy is allowed. This is why it is okay to
smoke opium, as long as you can control it so that you still can work well."

Mr. Khan says that like so many others, he is not lucky. Four years ago, he
moved from a farming village in southeastern Afghanistan to seek work in
Peshawar. But there was none, and he began to smoke opium. Soon he was
hooked on it and heroin. He says he can return to Afghanistan only when he
is cured and able to work again.

But there are no addiction centres willing to take him.

He has not slept in a bed in three months. Sleeping on the streets has
caked his skin with dirt, and his body has a rancid smell that makes people
rush away when he comes near.

"I would like to go home," he says, his chin falling to his chest. "I want
to be back in Afghanistan."

The man in the spotless white robe who has told him to be quiet spits in
disgust as he turns away.

"Look at you. What good would you be to anyone now?"