AFGHAN WAR MEANS CHEAP HEROIN

Pakistan Addicts Don't Bother Hiding, Live By Begging For Support

PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- These are easier times for Pakistan's estimated
300,000 heroin users, with prices tumbling from $1.20 a gram to 30 U.S.
cents 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 believe the Taliban lifted their year-old
ban against growing opium poppies, the starting point for heroin, so they
could tax the industry and replenish their war coffers. The ban had been
declared on religious grounds.

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

"Heroin addiction is 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."

Heroin addiction is a particularly large problem in Peshawar, in the
virtually lawless tribal areas near the Afghanistan border, 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.

Snorting in the open 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 America and Afghanistan has not quite penetrated
the heroin fog that clouds Abdullah's brain. "Somebody said something about
it, but it's not my problem," the slightly built 30-year-old Afghan refugee
mumbled as he huddled with several other addicts.

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

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.

"They are just like dead people," said Dr. Fadi Mouhammed, head of the
eight-bed Drug Treatment Center at the 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, said Mohammed. Hospitals charge $8 a month per person - a stiff
price in a country where a construction worker is lucky to make 50 U.S.
cents a day.

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

"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 can't.

'Get us into a hospital' 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 U.S. cents or an AK-47 assault rifle for as little as $30.
The addicts in Abdullah and Jamial's group hang around the border because
it's 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?" said Jamial. "We just lost
another man this morning."

"We buried him over there," Shah said, pointing to a garbage dump.