AFGHANS BATTLE DRUG ADDICTION

Treatment Centers for Women Reflect Increasing Opium Use

KABUL -- The first days were so painful that Mina Gul could barely
sit upright. Thin and lanky with wide brown eyes, she rubbed the back
of her neck ceaselessly with fingers stained reddish black by an
opium pipe. She couldn't shake the nausea. The light was almost
blinding in the clean, white-walled medical clinic, where she lay
crumpled in bed for days.

Before that, opium had been about the only thing keeping Gul afloat.
It started four years ago with the headaches. A relative told her to
try a bit of opium as a cure. "I tried it once a little -- then the
next day more, then more again, and then I was addicted," Gul said.

Since then, her husband has stopped working and the eldest of her
four children is more often on the streets than in school. Gul, 36,
is spending most of her time in a hospital bed.

Gul is one of 20 women in residential treatment at the Sanga Amaj
center in Afghanistan's capital. The small, two-story clinic near
Kabul University is one of 40 drug treatment clinics across
Afghanistan run by international aid organizations.

More than six years after U.S.-led forces launched a military
campaign here against the ruling Taliban movement, drug addiction is
fast becoming a major concern for the government. With opium
production reaching an all-time high of 6,000 tons last year,
according to the United Nations, domestic addiction rates in this
nation of nearly 32 million have also soared. A 2005 U.N. report
estimated that Afghanistan was home to about 1 million drug abusers.

Among the country's addicts, about 13 percent are women and 7 percent
are children, Afghan government officials say. Most of the women are
opium addicts desperate to blunt the trauma of endless war. Many are
illiterate mothers with unemployed husbands. Most have little in the
way of job skills, and some became addicts while picking opium
poppies to earn a living and support their families, said Zalmai
Afzali, a spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Counternarcotics.

"Afghanistan has been ravaged by 30 to 35 years of war. Everything
has been destroyed here, so it's not surprising that people turn to
drugs," Afzali said.

High rates of addiction have forced aid organizations to step in to
fill the vacuum left by a government still struggling with an
insurgency, meager resources and endemic corruption. The number of
drug treatment clinics has doubled during the past two years, Afzali
said, with an additional 34 mobile treatment clinics for women
operating across the country.

Treatment for female addicts is especially difficult, experts here
say, because women in rural, conservative parts of the country --
particularly in places such as Helmand province in the south, the
world's largest opium-producing region -- are often not allowed out
of the house. While drug addicts around the world endure shame, the
stigma for Afghan women who seek treatment can sometimes produce
violent responses from their families. In a country where the average
per-capita income is about $1,000 a year, addiction for women often
leads to desperation.

"We had a patient here who wanted to sell one of her kids," said
Toorpekay Zazai, a doctor who heads the Sanga Amaj center. "She said
she didn't have enough money to buy food or clothes for him. Finally,
we managed to get to her relatives in Canada, who were able to help
with some money. But there are lots of stories like that from the women here."

About 300 women have successfully completed treatment at Sanga Amaj
since the center opened last June, Zazai said. Women treated by the
clinic's three doctors usually stay for at least a month.

The first two weeks are spent purging the body of drugs. Gradually,
the women begin participating in group therapy and learning skills
such as sewing, embroidery and knitting. Successful treatment ends
with a celebratory feast at which residents, staff members and former
patients share stories of battling addiction.

For every success there is a relapse, doctors at the clinic say.
Women often spend weeks getting clean, only to return to households
seized by addiction.

"The risk is that when a woman is an addict, she doesn't get
treatment, then it will spread to the entire family," Zazai said.

"We have cases where whole families are addicted, so when the woman
goes home from treatment, the husband is still addicted and you have
to start all over again."