AT KABUL'S DOOR, AN ARMY OF ADDICTS

Each addict's story here in the Pakistan city of Quetta is sadder than the
next. Mooruddin Aki's arms were chopped off by the Taliban after
authorities caught him smoking opium in an Afghan school. At 18, he begs on
the streets and people who take pity on him place bills in his mouth.

Bahadar Khan, 28, began smoking four years ago when the car he was driving
collided head-on with a truck, killing his 5- year-old son. He asks to be
taken to the hospital, saying he wants to leave his addiction behind and
rejoin his estranged wife and his remaining two children in Peshawar.

In Pakistan, a poor country where two million refugees struggle for
survival, these addicts are the lowest of the low. There are an estimated
12,000 opium smokers in Quetta alone and only one rehabilitation center,
with 25 beds. But most addicts cannot afford to pay the $8 a month for food
and medicine. Instead they pay out 80 cents a dose, three or four times a day.

In a cemetery, surrounded by tombstones, a dozen addicts were smoking and
shooting up. The ground was covered with discarded matches, syringes and
fleas. The men's fingers and hair were singed from trying to get every last
hit off of the thin aluminum sheets on which they melt the drug for smoking.

Almost half of the men said they were from Afghanistan -- many were
refugees. Many of them expressed disdain for the United States and a
willingness to fight for Osama bin Laden. "If the U.S.A. comes," said Thor
Jan, a cadaverous 24-year-old, "I will tie a bomb to my body, I will smoke,
and I will go to American camp. I will go to paradise and be famous." But
most could barely keep their balance. Their greatest concern was finding a
way to pay for their next dose.

[Photo caption] As a bleary Ali Jumai, 35, left, inhaled opium, fellow
addicts in jest put a snake on his head.