TALIBAN BOOSTS DRUG INDUSTRY

Opium, Heroin Addicts Have Easy Access As Ban Lifted In Afghanistan

PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- These are easier times for Pakistan's estimated
300,000 heroin users, with prices tumbling from $1.20 to 30 cents a gram
after the Taliban government in Afghanistan, the world's largest grower of
opium poppies, lifted all restrictions on the industry in the face of U.S.
attacks.

U.S. and U.N. narcotics officials say the Taliban has ended its year- old
ban against the cultivation of opium poppies, the starting point for
heroin, so that it could tax the industry and replenish its war coffers.

The ban had been declared on religious grounds.

Oddly, for an officially Islamic nation that bans alcohol except for use by
foreigners, heroin, opium or hashish use in Pakistan seldom has been
attacked by leading Islamic clerics, said a U.N. counter- narcotics
official who asked to remain anonymous.

``Heroin addiction is simply not perceived as an important moral, religious
or social problem in Pakistan,'' the official said.

``I guess the Koran does not speak about heroin, and narcotics use was
traditional among the tribes of the region so no one pays it any mind.''

LARGEST MARKET

Heroin addiction is a particularly large problem in Peshawar, near the
border of Afghanistan, and the virtually lawless ``tribal areas'' that make
up the world's largest heroin market.

There are an estimated 40,000 heroin addicts in Peshawar, where smugglers
come to sell their sticky brown opium, usually in old flour sacks weighing
as much as 55 pounds.

Abdullah, an addict in Peshawar, comes daily to the tribal areas where
Afghan heroin, opium and hashish are sold almost openly.

News of the war between the United States and Afghanistan has not quite
penetrated the heroin fog that clouds Abdullah's brain.

`NOT MY PROBLEM'

``Somebody said something about it, but it's not my problem,'' the slightly
built, 30-year-old Afghan refugee mumbled as he huddled near a building
with several other addicts.

His biggest challenge is begging or stealing 30 cents for the gram that he
needs each day.

``Give me money or I will cut myself,'' said Zeent Shah, another addict,
holding a broken razor blade to his bare breast.

His chest and arms, caked with black dirt from years of living on the
street, were crisscrossed with thin scars.

Their hair spiked with dirt, their shirts and pants filthy, shoes long ago
traded for another hit, Abdullah and the other men made no attempt to hide
as they heated the white powder on bits of tin paper and inhaled the fumes
through metal tubes.

Their noses were uniformly black from rubbing the foils to their noses to
pick up every last bit of the narcotic.

Passersby paid no notice, stopping only when Western visitors showed up.

A policeman half a block away sent a boy with the order that the visitors
should leave the area, but he did not walk over himself.

`LIKE DEAD PEOPLE'

``They are just like dead people,'' said Dr. Fadi Mouhammed, head of the
eight-bed drug treatment center at Lady Dearing Hospital.

The men (women addicts are extremely rare) are commonly known here as
powdri -- the powder users.

In all of Peshawar, there are less than 300 beds for heroin-addiction
treatment, Mohammed said. Hospitals charge $8 a month per person -- a stiff
price in a country where a construction worker is lucky to make 50 cents a day.

So the addicts beg and steal, sleeping in dark, urine-smelling hallways in
Peshawar's Old City -- including the entryway of the inappropriately named
Paradise Hotel -- or in the tribal areas along the border, shooing away
water buffaloes to look for scraps of bread in garbage dumps.

LIVE BY BEGGING

``I do not tell a lie, sir, I live by just begging,'' said a tall,
English-speaking addict whose head nodded violently as he identified
himself as ``Jamial, son of Mishazada of Waziristan . . . a high school
graduate and 35 years old.''

He had been a truck driver, almost a middle-class profession in Pakistan.
But for the past 12 years he has been a regular heroin snorter, working odd
jobs when he can, begging when he cannot, and staying away from his family
out of an apparent sense of shame.

Abdullah, who like many Afghans uses only one name, has no such shame and
returns every three or four days to eat and bathe at the mud house of his
wife and four children, just a couple of blocks from where he usually takes
his hits.

``She gets angry with me because they are poor also. She tells me to bring
something to eat for the children,'' he said, barely able to stand after
inhaling the fumes from a one-quarter gram hit.

``But I tell her I have to take care of myself. I have not eaten for two
days now.''

THE SPOT

Three blocks from where Abdullah and Jamial snort, anyone who can get past
the police checkpoint and the sign that says ``No Foreigners Allowed Beyond
This Point'' can walk into a shop and buy a gram of opium for 15 cents or
an AK-47 assault rifle for as little as $30.

The addicts in Abdullah's and Jamial's group hang around the border because
it is a good place to hit up the foreigners who stop there, and just a
short walk to their suppliers. But they would rather be somewhere else.

``Please, can you get us into a hospital?'' Jamial said. ``We just lost
another man this morning.''

He was Ikbal, an addict who had been ``too weak to even move for the past
two days,'' said Shah, a look of sadness flashing across his face before he
resumed his insistent begging.

``We buried him over there,'' Shah said, pointing to what appeared to be a
garbage dump a block away.

``Give me money, or I will end up with Ikbal.''