RECORD POPPY CROP A HARVEST OF MISERY

While The Outside World Targets Afghanistan's Exports Of Opiates,
Addiction Inside The Country Gets Little Attention

KABUL - Brothers Abdul Jabar and Abdul Sitar crouch on the floor of
their spartan Kabul living room, each light up a small heroin
cigarette and draw deeply on the powerful drug.

Nearby, several of their 11 small children watch impassively. For the
kids, this is nothing unusual. Their fathers have been addicted to
heroin, and largely incapacitated by it, since long before they were born.

Two of the older boys, who look about eight or nine, generate the
family's only income by selling products off a cart after school.

"Because of this thing, I can't work, I can't talk sometimes. I eat
stones," says Abdul Jabar, who later illustrates his odd compulsion
by swallowing three small rocks. He says he usually passes them
without incident.

"If I knew I would be in this condition, I wouldn't have used this
drug. If they paid me $10-million, I wouldn't have used this drug."

Yet the two brothers, and a third who successfully went through
rehabilitation recently, are far from being alone in their plight.

Although it is a strict Muslim country, held in the grip of a
fundamentalist regime for five years until 2001, Afghanistan is
suffering from a boom in heroin addiction.

The international community has sought to crack down on the warweary
nation's record poppy crops, now serving 90% of the world's demand,
but the abundant supply of heroin's main raw ingredient has taken a
terrible toll at home.

An influx of Afghan refugees who became addicted in Iran and in
Pakistan, the trauma and physical ravages of nearly 30 years of war,
and grinding poverty are also blamed.

"It is not only the rest of the world that is suffering. We are
suffering; it is a big problem for us as well," says Dr. Tariq
Suliman, who heads the Nejat centre, a local rehab clinic.

He says the international community, so focused on curbing poppy
production, has paid little heed to Afghanistan's domestic drug epidemic.

"Now on each and every street we have people who suffer from drug
addiction.? It is spreading fast and it is difficult to control." And
it is not always intentional.

In one case, a father became perplexed by the sickness that afflicted
his three children -- aged seven, nine and 15-- whom he had sent into
the poppy fields to work.

He eventually brought them to Nejat, where Dr. Suliman diagnosed
classic withdrawal symptoms, a result of their contact with the poppies.

"When we told him, 'Your kids are addicted,' he was very sad, and he
said, 'If I was given a million Afghanis to cultivate poppies, I
wouldn't do it now.' " Meanwhile, injection of heroin -- and sharing
of needles -- is becoming increasingly more common, helping fuel an
HIV problem that threatens to spiral out of control.

Surprisingly, a smaller part of the HIV outbreak is related to
prostitution, an even more subterranean culture in the Muslim nation.

There are foreign prostitutes working out of Chinese restaurants in
Kabul, catering mainly to expats, as well as home-grown sex workers,
including young boys known as bachabozi, or "playing boys," experts say.

Authorities have confirmed 71 HIV cases in Afghanistan, but estimate
there are really 1,500 to 2,000, says Miodrag Atanasijevic of the aid
group Medecins du Monde, which runs a street outreach program for
Kabul addicts.

A study by Catherine Todd, an epidemiologist from the University of
California at San Diego who is working in the capital, found that a
high percentage of intravenous drug users shared needles and had
Hepatitis C, seen as a precursor of HIV spread.

The incidence of HIV among such addicts now sits at about 3%, but if
current trends continue it will reach concentrated epidemic status --
5% of users -- in at least one location within a year, with
potentially "devastating" consequences. Once it hits 20%, "we've lost
the battle," says Ms. Todd.

"The window of opportunity is open but it's in the process of
closing. You can spend millions now, or billions later."

A United Nations study in 2005 estimated there are a million Afghan
drug addicts: 50,000 using heroin, 150,000 opium, 500,000 hashish and
about 400,000 using other illicit drugs and pharmaceuticals. The
number of heroin addicts doubled in Kabul between 2003 and 2005.

And their ranks have undoubtedly swollen since then, says Dr. Suliman.

Among them is Matiulah, who, like many Afghans, goes by just one
name. He says he became hooked in 1993, when mujahedeen factions were
battling over Kabul, and his wife, caught in the crossfire, was killed.

Two addicts for whom he played his flute introduced him to heroin
smoking. He had told them how sad he felt.

"When I used the drug, it really reduced my pain," he says. "The drug
was the only thing that stopped me [from] thinking about my wife."

He later moved north of Kabul but would come back to the city to buy
heroin, even during the years of the Taliban, who took the Koran's
ban on intoxicants so seriously, they made a public display of riding
their tanks over beer cans.

His dealer eventually gave it to him for free in exchange for his
rounding up new customers.

Finally, last year, he was discovered by the newly set-up Medecins du
Monde program, has now cut back to three heroin cigarettes a day and
is convinced he will stop for good.

As was the case with his brother, war was central to Fardin's
addiction. The 36-year-old moved to Iran in the mid-1990s to escape
Afghanistan's civil strife. The owner of the factory where he worked
put him on to heroin smoking, and soon he was anxious all the time,
constantly sleepy and prone to vomiting. It ruined his life, he says.

Three weeks ago, though, he entered the Nejat centre and now believes
he is clean.

"It is very easy to get heroin now, compared to a few years ago,"
Fardin says. "In every part of Kabul there are dealers."

Then there are those who get hooked just because of their part in the
industry, like the three young poppy workers. In Helmand province, a
heroin factory worker would wear a blanket around his shoulders, then
shake it out at home close to his children.

They would be crying -- until the blanket dispersed its opiate dust,
says Dr. Mohammad Zafar, director of demand reduction in the Ministry
of Counter Narcotics.

Although a number of treatment programs have cropped up since the
fall of the Taliban, he says waiting lists are still months long.

The Abdul brothers have been trying for six months to get into Nejat,
and worry their brother, who was treated successfully there and lives
with them, could fall off the wagon.

"If we were treated together, this problem would have been solved
very soon," says Abdul Jabar.

They developed their habit in Iran, where they went to get away from
the war between the Soviets and mujahedeen in the 1980s. They were
frequenting prostitutes in the Islamic republic, and a friend told
Abdul Jabar he could improve his stamina after smoking heroin.

"I went for sex; I was doing it for two hours," he recalls. "But I
wasn't aware that from the inside, I was dying."