India's Northeast Flooded By Heroin

IMPHAL, India (AP) Worried that heroin from neighboring Burma was ruining
the youth of India's remote northeast, separatist guerrillas began enforcing
their own antidrug policy: If you use narcotics, expect a bullet in the
head.

Ronen, an 18yearold addict who wouldn't give his last name, vividly
remembers when he got his first warning. It was a moonless night last August.
A militant knocked on his door and told him to stop using heroin.

Shaken, Ronen tried to switch to alcohol, but he gave up quickly and went
back to mainlining heroin. For weeks, he stayed shut up at home, except for
occasional nighttime meetings with a street dealer.

Then on Christmas, he partied with friends all night. Two days later, three
men with automatic rifles dragged him from his house.

``They told me, `This is your last warning.' Then suddenly, one man shot me
in the thigh,'' Ronen says.

He lay in bed a month while the wound healed. Without drugs, his body shook
violently, his head hurt. He was desperate for heroin. But he was also scared
of the rebels. His parents took him to the Kripa Deaddiction Center, one of
two dozen such centers in Imphal, capital of Manipur state.

In the last five years, half of those who underwent the fivemonth
residential program have given up drugs, Hijam Dinesh, an official at Kripa,
said. The rest either died, disappeared or relapsed into drug abuse.

Police say they don't know how many addicts have been shot by the region's
powerful rebel movements.

Yet, the guerrillas' threats have not reduced addiction drastically.

Manipur, with 2 million people, has 50,000 addicts, said R.C. Bhattacharji,
narcotics commissioner at the Central Bureau of Narcotics.

The dense forests and rugged hills of Manipur are popular routes for drug
runners from the ``Golden Triangle'' the area at the intersection of Burma,
Laos and Thailand that grows 60 percent of the world's opium poppies, the
raw material for heroin and morphine. Most of the drugs are destined for the
United States and Europe.

Police admit they are incapable of stopping the trade, claiming they are
hindered by government apathy, inadequate staff, poor pay and lack of money
for informers. The Narcotics and Border Affairs Police has just 12 officers
for Manipur. In one year, they seized only 2.2 pounds of heroin.

``We have five guns and one jeep. And we have to cover the entire state,''
said Officer A.S. Ramlung. ``What can I do?'