PAKISTANIS SEEK AFGHAN HEROIN

QUETTA, Pakistan (AP) - Faint rumblings of global war blanket this city by
the Afghan border except under one narrow bridge. For 200 desperate heroin
addicts, the world already has gone up in smoke.

Townspeople know they are there. Traffic on Haly Road thunders over them.
Children walk across the Habib Nalah bridge on their way to S.T. Francis
grammar school, within shouting distance of the addicts.

But no one goes below without a desperate purpose. The stench from the open
sewer that runs under the bridge is reason enough. Beyond that, the moans
and murmurs might be an extra circle of Dante's inferno.

The addicts are Pakistani, but the heroin is Afghan. Narcotics experts say
Afghanistan was the world's biggest poppy grower until last year, when the
Taliban, citing Islamic religious principles, banned poppy production and
ordered the country's poppy fields destroyed.

"Please, we want to stop," pleaded Abdul Jalil, 40, a handsome man with
silver hair and a sturdy frame. Only his soot-blackened features and filthy
clothes suggest his eight years of life among the little band.

His wife keeps their three children at her brother's place, barely able to
scrape up food for them with odd jobs. He sees her occasionally, despite it
all, but they spend little time together.

"There is no job for me," Jalil said. He has a high school education, but
times are hard. "I could not earn any money for my family. I tried, but I
fell into this."

With persistent begging, Jalil and the others manage to scrape up the 50
rupees - 75 cents - necessary to buy a daily dose of brown heroin. They
heat it on a strip of tin foil and inhale deeply of the fumes.

Members of the tiny community sleep on raw concrete next to a channel of
water so fetid it almost bubbles. In winter, they make small fires. They
must eat, but food is seldom in evidence.

As a reporter watched, addicts prepared their fixes without a glance at the
submachinegun-toting policeman who followed him everywhere on government
orders. The officer was even less interested in them.

"Look, it's very simple," the regional police chief, Abid Ali, explained.
"We can only treat 500 people, and Quetta has 10,000 addicts. Until that
changes, what is the point in arresting them?"

As Jalil spoke, 20-year-old Nawab Khan walked up unsteadily. After three
years on heroin, he had dim, hollow eyes and a hangdog look.

"We keep asking for a hospital to take us, but there is no chance," he
said. "We all want to get over this."

Jalil said the little community started 15 years ago with a few dozen
addicts who came to smoke among friends. Gradually, it grew. In recent
years, the population has swollen to several hundred.

Over his shoulder, scores of others huddled in small knots under the bridge
arch, the farthest ones barely visible in the gloom. A few walked around,
noticing little.

"None of us have jobs, there are none," he said. "No money, no bread. We
are all a bit confused."

Asked for their thoughts on the crisis gripping the city over their heads,
the chance that Americans might bomb Afghanistan and shake the immediate
world, neither Jalil nor Khan offered an answer. Instead, both nodded
blankly, each with pleasant smiles, and waited for what they hoped would be
a 50 rupee handout.