DRUG PROBLEM 'SPREADING FAST'

A 2005 UN study estimated there were a million Afghan addicts, writes
Tom Blackwell in Kabul.

The number of heroin addicts in the city doubled between 2003 and 2005.

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
youngsters, 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 war-weary
nation's record poppy crops, now serving 90 per cent 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 rehab clinic.

"Now on each and every street we have people who suffer from drug
addiction. .. It is spreading fast and it is difficult to control."

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 said 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.

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, said Dr. Mohammad
Zafar, director of demand reduction in the ministry of counter narcotics.

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

Although a number of treatment programs have cropped up since the
fall of the Taliban, 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.