KYRGYZSTAN – FRONTLINE OF GLOBAL DRUG WAR

His speech is slurred and his eyes have the glazed look of the confirmed
opium addict but Nurbek is clear about one thing.

"I was never a dealer, I never sold drugs. People like me need proper
medical care, not punishment. But the people who push that stuff, they
should be locked away," said the tall, gangling, 32-year-old Kyrgyz.

Nurbek, a former engineering student, is one of a growing army of opium
addicts in Kyrgyzstan, an impoverished ex-Soviet republic that straddles
one of the world's most lucrative drug trafficking routes between
Afghanistan and Western markets.

Like many addicts around the world, Nurbek wants to give up drugs but
woefully inadequate medical facilities and the easy availability of opium
and hashish make his battle all the more arduous.

Kyrgyzstan Needs More Western Help to Combat Traffickers

"We have around 3,500 officially registered opium addicts in Kyrgyzstan but
the real figure is much higher, and rising," said Dr. Victor Yurchenko,
head of the clinic in the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek where Nurbek is receiving
treatment.

The clinic was one of several Kyrgyz medical institutions to receive
humanitarian aid supplies during U.S. First Lady Hillary Clinton's recent
tour of Central Asia that included Kyrgyzstan.

Though grateful for such donations, Kyrgyzstan says the wealthy Western
countries should provide far more help -- not least because they, not the
Central Asian states, are the final destination for most drugs passing
through the region.

"Perhaps in 10 years' time, when our economy is stronger, we might be able
to wage effective war against the drug dealers but for now we desperately
need outside help," said Maj.-Gen. Askarbek Mameev, head of the State
Commission on Drugs Control.

"If Europe does not help us the flood of narcotics will inundate us all,"
he told Reuters in an interview.

International experts share his concern.

"A very real danger exists that one or more of the Central Asian states
will become 'narcocracies' similar to Myanmar (Burma) and Colombia," said a
report published last year by the London-based International Institute for
Strategic Studies.

It said Kyrgyzstan alone was exporting more narcotics by 1995 than either
Myanmar or Thailand -- which with Laos form the notorious Golden Triangle.

Drugs a Billion-Dollar Industry in Impoverished Region

The Central Asian drugs industry has an annual turnover worth between $1
billion and $14 billion, the report said. In 1993 Kyrgyzstan even briefly
considered legalizing poppy-growing as a means of boosting meager state
revenues.

Up to four million people in the southern Kyrgyz city of Osh and its
surrounding region are involved in the production, processing, dealing and
moving of raw opium, the report said.

Behind these sobering statistics lies an unholy alliance of drug barons,
corrupt officials and impoverished farmers unable to eke out a living from
other crops.

Powerful crime syndicates in Central Asia and Russia are reaping huge
profits from trafficking. Opium prices rise sharply along the smuggling
chain, from a few hundred dollars in Afghanistan to $1,000 in Bishkek to
$10,000 in Moscow.

"We cannot realistically expect to make much headway against the
traffickers until political and economic stability have returned to this
region," said Mameev.

All five ex-Soviet republics in Central Asia -- Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan,
Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan -- remain economically weak more
than six years after gaining independence from Moscow.

Tajikistan and its neighbor Afghanistan -- which accounts for 50 percent of
the world's heroin supply -- are also politically shaky after years of
debilitating civil war.

U.N. Targets Afghan Farmers to Stem Flow of Opium

Experts say an estimated 100 kg (220 lbs) of processed opium originating in
Afghanistan flows north every week along the old Silk Road across
Tajikistan to Osh in Kyrgyzstan.

"If we could only seal this road we would deal a major blow to drugs
trafficking through Kyrgyzstan," said Mameev, pointing to the tortuous
mountainous route on a map in his office. "It is the only road from
Tajikistan and there are no flights."

Police and security forces are currently seizing only about 5 percent of
the opium passing along the corridor, he said.

In a bid to tackle the drugs problem at its origin, the United Nations last
year launched a 10-year, $25 million program aimed at weaning Afghan
farmers off opium poppy and onto other crops.

But Pino Arlacchi, head of the U.N.'s Vienna-based anti-drug agency, said
the Afghan program risked driving production into the former Soviet republics.

"This is why we must take strong preventive measures and not sit back and
wait for the displacement to take place," Arlacchi told reporters in the
Kazakh city of Almaty earlier this month.

Kyrgyzstan Steps Up Battle against Domestic Drugs Trade

One such measure has been the setting up of special brigades in Kyrgyzstan
to destroy the hemp bushes which produce marijuana. The brigades, which
provide work for unemployed men, destroyed more than 1,000 hectares (2,470
acres) of hemp in 1997, Mameev said.

Helped by the United Nations, Kyrgyzstan is also sending officials abroad
for training and has launched a media campaign highlighting the dangers of
drug abuse.

But Mameev said increased regional cooperation, with strong U.N. and
Western financial backing, was the key to success in combating the drugs
trade. "We just don't have the weapons, the vehicles, the equipment to
manage this alone," he said.

Yurchenko said the average age of opium addicts in Bishkek had fallen to
around 16 or 17 years from 25 a few years ago.

Surveys pointed to increased acquaintance with drugs among younger
schoolchildren, he said.

"Here at the clinic we can help put addicts back on the path to recovery
but long-term treatment is costly, complex and tied up with our economic
and social problems," said Yurchenko.

Nurbek needs no reminding that the path ahead is a hard one.

After 20 days of treatment at the clinic he will return to a rural labor
camp to serve out the rest of a two-year sentence for possession and use of
illegal drugs.

"There they give us only bread to eat," he said. "But I know that I am one
of the luckier ones. At least my parents have some money, they care about
me and bring me food."