DRUG CENTER TAKING BACK RUSSIA STREETS

City Without Drugs Treats Addicts With A Controversial Program Of
Discipline While Targeting Dealers With A Mix Of Grass-Roots Monitoring And
Vigilantism.

YEKATERINBURG, Russia -- The Fund for a City Without Drugs makes no secret
of its methods, but the scene at the group's drug-rehabilitation center
still comes as a shock.

Young men lie on the springs of metal cots, their jean jackets serving as
both sheets and mattresses. Their wrists are handcuffed to the beds. Their
eyes are sunken, their faces pallid, their voices flat. They are prisoners,
of both heroin and of the men who swear to help them.

An explosion in drug use is battering Russia. It fuels not only crime and
poverty, but the spread of AIDS as well. The police-state controls of the
Soviet-era have collapsed. Corruption and laxity among border guards,
police and prosecutors make narcotics enforcement erratic at best.

People are fed up. And in the hard-hit Ural Mountains city of
Yekaterinburg, they are pushing aside police and doctors in search of a
solution.

A trio of local businessmen with controversial links to suspected organized
crime groups have formed City Without Drugs to attack the narcotics trade
on both ends. They treat users with a homemade program that shuns medicine
in favor of discipline. They target dealers with a mix of grass-roots
monitoring and hands-on vigilantism.

With a typical lack of modesty, the fund's founders say their approach
should serve as a model not only for Russia but for the West too. Police
and government officials have visited Yekaterinburg from other Russian
regions to take notes on the program. Last week, City Without Drugs
welcomed an observer from Ukraine.

Should the fund's influence grow beyond Yekaterinburg, its tactics and its
ties to alleged mob figures could present President-elect Vladimir Putin
with a dilemma. Putin may share the group's zeal for order. But he wants
that order imposed by the state, and he has talked often about breaking up
organized crime.

"My personal opinion is that dealers should be shot," said Andrei Kabanov,
a former heroin addict and co-founder of City Without Drugs. "But being a
loyal citizen, without a law adopted by our government, we can't do this."

With their hands so tied, Kabanov and his supporters have found other ways
to disrupt the drug trade. They have set up a pager service to field tips
from concerned residents--70,000 calls since it began last year. They might
visit a suspected drug dealer at his home or confront him on the street.

"We don't have the right to arrest people," said Igor Varov, the fund's
president. "But everybody has his own right as a citizen. If someone sells
heroin to my son, he won't stay alive. This is my right as a father."

Some Yekaterinburg dealers have wound up brutally beaten. Some have seen
their homes set on fire.

In one celebrated show last fall, a force of about 500 beefy men descended
on the drug-ravaged neighborhood of Gypsy Village. Some of the men emerged
from the Mercedes-Benzes and other luxury cars to pay house calls on
suspected dealers. Others stood around for hours, watching people come and
go, sending out their message.

Drug sales in the area declined.

"Well, look, there goes a narco," said Varov, wheeling his Mercedes through
the back alleys of a neighborhood he said is rife with drug sales. "There.
Another one. And another."

Most of the people coming and going from the apartment buildings fit
Varov's bill, including, possibly, the cobbler whose tiny workshop opens
out onto a sidewalk. It could be good cover for drug sales.

"What are you doing here?" Varov asked, powering down a car window to talk
to a disheveled fellow who looked about 45 but was probably much younger.
The man replied meekly, something about going to the store.

"Better that you get out of here before I kill you," said Varov.

He raised the window and drove off.

Last month, Sverdlovsk Gov. Eduard Rossel appointed Varov chief of a
regional commission that includes high-ranking officials from several
law-enforcement agencies. The idea, Varov said, is to collect information
on drug trafficking and better target and coordinate enforcement.

Yekaterinburg police are not represented on the panel. Varov and his
colleagues accuse them of protecting the traffickers and even dealing drugs
themselves.

The methods of City Without Drugs are not the only concern.

When created last year, the fund received significant support from the
Uralmash Public and Political Union, widely regarded as the political arm
of one of Russia's most powerful organized crime gangs.

City Without Drugs, some critics alleged, was helping Uralmash consolidate
its own grip on the lucrative heroin market by putting competing dealers
out of business. Others contended that City Without Drugs was merely a
political front, a public-relations campaign to burnish the thuggish image
of a Uralmash candidate for parliament.

If so, the effort failed. Uralmash's Alexander Khabarov lost the race for
parliament to his main and bitter rival, the chief of the local police.

"People didn't vote for Khabarov because they are afraid of him," said a
Yekaterinburg political observer. "It's that simple."

Now, contrary to many predictions, City Without Drugs is continuing its
campaign. Varov said Uralmash's role has fallen off. And he brushed off
allegations about Uralmash's criminal history.

"I believe as Rossel believes," Varov said, referring to the Sverdlovsk
governor. "If you think someone is a criminal, then prosecute him. If you
cannot prosecute him, that means he is not a criminal."

Varov and his partners hope to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for a
research and treatment facility in Yekaterinburg. Their current rehab
center, now home to 64 young men, is near capacity. The waiting list,
already at more than 300 names, is growing.

Alexander, a 23-year-old factory worker, wants to be on that list. He
started taking drugs as a conscript during the first war in Chechnya in
1996. By the time he was released from the army, he was a heroin addict.
The last two years have been a struggle to hold down a job and support a
family and a habit that eats up his measly salary.

Heroin is abundant in Yekaterinburg and, at less than $4 a fix, relatively
cheap.

The industrial city, famous as the place where the Bolsheviks murdered the
last Russian czar, is a transit point for drug traffickers working between
Central Asia and Europe. Addicts interviewed at clinics in the city said
heroin is readily available even in small towns.

Echoing Kabanov and his colleagues, the addicts and even some social
workers dismissed the influence of the kind of risk factors associated with
American drug usage--broken homes, for example, or poverty. They said drug
use usually starts and takes hold because young people are curious and
because heroin has a cool image among many Russian teenagers.

Alexander views City Without Drugs with mixed feelings. He is worried by
the center's reputation for toughness. But his mother is desperate, and
Alexander says he wants to care for his wife and 2-year-old child.

"I don't know what to do," said Alexander's mother, fighting back tears
during a visit at a state-run detox clinic where Alexander is undergoing
his fourth round of treatment. "This is not working."

So, too, says Kabanov, a former heroin addict who models the fund's rehab
program after his own cold turkey experience. He says the medical approach
to addiction is doomed to fail and that doctors are criticizing him merely
to protect their turf.

"The whole world considers drug addiction a disease," said Kabanov, who was
treated eight times at a Moscow clinic before finally beating his addiction
on his own. "A disease assumes compassion, pity. Drug addicts do not
deserve compassion because it is not a disease.

Many of the young men at the fund's rehab center in a wooded area on the
outskirts of Yekaterinburg were put there by their parents. Most had tried
treatment before, some several times, but eventually all ended up back on
the needle.

The most recent arrivals to the center are handcuffed to their beds. They
are fed only bread and water during their two or three weeks of withdrawal.
They are allowed to get up three times a day to go to the bathroom.

Those who have completed the detox program offer encouragement to the new
arrivals.

"We tell them there is no other way out," said Andrei Vershinin, 25, who
was among the initial group of six who came to the clinic when it opened
last December.

The young men also keep each other in line. They look up to Varov, calling
him by a Russian term of endearment much like "Daddy." They accept the
discipline he imposes.

"They are a family, after all," Kabanov said. "If someone does something
wrong, he is punished in a fatherly way. You can't do it without
punishment, because a drug addict is a scoundrel. He has to develop a reflex

"Pain once. Pain twice. Then he understands. Nothing horrible."

Varov said he expects most of the addicts to stay in the center for about a
year. If they want to stay longer, they can.

Those like Vershinin, who says he has lost all craving for heroin, are
allowed to walk the woods or visit a nearby lake. But they are barred from,
say, going into central Yekaterinburg on their own.

"What do they need there?" asked Varov. "They have all they need here. All
that is there is heroin."

Some young men have fled. But Varov and his people tracked them down and
brought them back. Others have left and returned on their own accord.
"There is one still missing," Varov said. "But we will find him. And we
will haul him back."

The center is only 7 months old, so Kabanov may be too quick with his
boasts of unprecedented results. Doctors and psychiatrists who treat
addicts in Yekaterinburg warn that relapses are common. Kabanov's charges
have yet to live on their own

Varov and Kabanov vow to follow their boys for as long as it takes to keep
them clean. And few have any doubts that any missteps would mean hell to pay.