PAKISTANI DRUG PROJECT WEANS ADDICTS

LAHORE, Pakistan, - The carcasses on the slabs of
Lahore's old meat market are moving. They turn out to
be humans, waking beneath filthy rags to start their day with drugs.

"Heroin is my daily life and my daily death," says Shoaib, sucking at
the fumes of a blob of heated heroin sliding down a piece of
discarded tin foil. "If I didn't have this pipe in my hand, who
knows, it might have been a pen."

It might have, and it still could be, say the staff of a novel do-it-
yourself rehabilitation project which caters to a tiny few of
Pakistan's growing number of addicts.

"The last survey said there were 3.2 million addicts in Pakistan,"
said the director of Nai Zindagi (New Life), Tariq Zafar. "Look
around. There's more than anyone can handle."

Lahore, on the border with archfoe India, is Pakistan's showcase city,
combining beautiful old mosques, churches and gardens with elegant
schools that turn out the nation's elite.

FARAWAY EYES IN DESERTED BUILDINGS

But behind the tree-lined boulevards are deserted buildings, like the
old mutton market, where men with faraway eyes and unsteady legs count
off the moments between craving and oblivion.

They squat on the grass outside the main mosque sharing needles and
drugs; they squat by a tea stall passing a pipe while a nearby armed
policeman drinks tea and does nothing.

"What else can the police do?" said Zafar. "It's pointless arresting
an addict. It's a nightmare for the police to bang someone up and then
find him screaming in pain from withdrawal in the middle of the night
with no hospitals to take him to."

Most are poor males with a shattered family history they can forget in
heroin's release; others, like Shahid Ranja, now a worker on the
project, are middle-class casualties.

"I was an addict. I had personal problems, family problems, that's why
I used heroin, and had the fortune to meet Tariq Zafar. That was in
1992. He admitted me, and I was clean."

Nai Zindagi's methods are based on classic treatments used in the
developed world -- detoxification, therapy, after-care and
counselling. What's different is that it's a business.

CUTTING THE DONOR ADDICTION

"We started out with donor money from the EEC (European Economic
Community), the United Nations and so forth. But it created a
dependency too. When funding stopped, so did the project, so we
realised this was an addiction we had to break also," said Zafar.

"So now it's a sustainable project. Our clients are taught to make
furniture and other items which we sell in the shop. We've one in
Islamabad and soon one in Lahore," said Zafar.

The Islamabad shop is situated in the capital's latest shopping mall
and resembles a fashionable Western interior design outlet, down to
its wares -- CD racks, leather bags and chairs.

Most items are made by recovering addicts in a residential centre in
Angoori in the Murree hills northeast of the capital.

Here Nai Zindagi has built a small colony of squat, adobe-style houses
where as many as 50 addicts learn to find their feet, their
self-respect and some skills.

"Everything about this is low-tech and low-cost. There's no point
getting a Pajero (jeep) from a donor if three years later you can't
afford to service it," said Zafar.

ADDICT WITH TROLLEY-BORNE DRUGS

"We did not cut a single tree to make these houses. Every one is built
around existing trees and rocks. The walls are plaster that doesn't
need painting, and the roofs are mud with a thin covering of cement to
make them waterproof. Dead simple."

The treatment model has attracted the attention of countries like
Thailand, Myanmar, China and Vietnam.

Addicts have to make their own way to the Angoori clinic to prove they
are motivated. "Otherwise they'd come for a bit of cash, some
cigarettes and then disappear, Zafar explained.

Most stay. The recovery rate is around 30 to 40 percent. They stay up
to 10 weeks and can then learn carpentry or other skills.

Muzzamil did not walk to Angoori. He lost his legs years ago and is a
refugee from Bangladesh. "He had a little trolley and got boys to
wheel him from shrine to shrine to beg. When he arrived here, his
trolley was stuffed with drugs," said Zafar.

He has been at the centre for a couple of years, during which time he
has turned from junkie to craftsman.

CRACKDOWN ON HOMEGROWN HEROIN

Pakistan has successfully cracked down on domestic heroin production.
But drugs are brought in from neighbouring Afghanistan, the world's
second-biggest producer of raw opium.

A small bag of heroin on the street costs about 40 rupees (less than
$1) and addicts can spend four times that daily, with money earned
through begging, petty theft and occasional work.

Away from the street the life of the addict changes; he trades
derelict houses and the feel of rubbish and foul water underfoot for
warm, clean shelter. He works with his own wood shavings underfoot and
walks in a dappled pine forest.

"These people you are talking to here, they are all rogues, thieves
and con-men," said Zafar. "But they change. The moment they get here,
they start to become accountable."