SUFFER THE LITTLE CHILDREN

More And More Children Are Testing Positive For Opium Addiction In
Afghanistan, Some From Second-hand Smoke And Some Because Their
Parents Give It To Them, Dan Williams Reports.

KABUL

Look closer at the drawings on the wall of the Sanga Amaj clinic, and
a wrenching motif emerges.

One 11-year-old's family tableau shows father and mother huddled over
heroin kits as their sons watch helplessly. Another sketch is of
smiling youngsters around a poppy plant that has been crossed out in
red, like a traffic no-go sign.

Taken in sequence, they're an ideal depiction of the recovery that
Sanga Amaj, one of three U.S.-funded drug clinics for women and
children in Afghanistan, offers in modest measure to the most
overlooked and vulnerable of the country's many opiate addicts. While
addict babies born to drug-using mothers are familiar in the West,
experts say the Afghan phenomenon of parents exposing their young to
second-hand opium smoke, or actively encouraging them to partake, is
unique and largely unexplored.

" When kids are testing positive like this, then there has to be a
serious problem," said Thom Browne, of the U.S. State Department's
Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.

"We don't know the long-term effects of this on the kids' brains,
their development, their emotions. It looks like there's a can of
worms here, not just in the high addiction rate, but (also) in the
level of addiction," he said.

A low-slung complex of dormitories and workshops on a side road near
Kabul University, Sanga Amaj began four years ago as a clinic for
female addicts, housing 20 at a time. Their young children were also
put up for convenience, but staff immediately noticed that some showed
withdrawal symptoms of their own.

The 15 boys and girls there range from three to 10 years in age. Seven
are healthy, staying while their mothers undergo a 45-day
detoxification and re-education course in rooms just across the leafy
courtyard. The other eight are in recovery.

Parwana is nine, but looks younger, her growth likely stunted by the
opium to which she says her widowed mother introduced her and a
five-year-old brother who is also in Sanga Amaj.

"We came here to be fixed, so that we don't sleep and feel dull all
the time," she said through a translator.

"Before, I didn't know the enjoyment of life. I was unwilling to eat.
I always had headaches. Now I feel like I'm normal."

Sanga Amaj and the other clinics provide basic medication for
withdrawal symptoms, but, in line with the Afghan stigma on opiate
use, they appear to frown on heroin substitutes such as methadone and
insist patients go cold turkey.

While the relapse rate for those who have undergone addiction therapy
is not known, up to a quarter of women return, said Abdul Basir, one
of the Afghan co-ordinators at Sanga Amaj. There are fewer child
re-admissions, he said.

Fewer still would fall back into drug use if their original care were
longer. According to Fadilan Abdul Kayong of the Colombo Plan, an
international group that advises the Afghan government on narcotics
awareness, child addicts need a minimum 90-day care program, double
what is now available.

As Afghanistan is the No. 1 exporter of opiates, the world's focus is
on cracking down on production rather than fighting domestic addiction.

Out of 40 rehabilitation clinics in the country, 30 are paid for by
the United States, she said. Most are for men and youths, while three
new clinics for women and children are under construction.

In rural areas, harsh economics can exacerbate the problem. Women
eking out a living at carpet weaving have been known to blow opium
smoke on babies to keep them calm. The drug also prevents child
workers from chafing at long hours on the loom. Shah shrugged off the
scale of the challenge, a common response from those working to
relieve Afghanistan's war ravages.

"I care about the numbers, but I care more about the people," she
said.

Afghan drug addiction twice global average: UN

KABUL

Eight per cent of Afghans suffer from drug addiction, a rate twice the
global average and a "major" growing problem for the world's leading
narcotic producer, a survey warned Monday.

Issued by the Afghan government and United Nations Office on Drugs and
Crime (UNODC), the report found around one million people in the
country aged 15 to 64 had drug addictions, often to opium and heroin.

"After three decades of war-related trauma, unlimited availability of
cheap narcotics and limited access to treatment have created a major,
and growing, addiction problem in Afghanistan," UNODC executive
director Antonio Maria Costa said.

The study also found that in the last five years the number of regular
opium users had jumped 53 per cent and the number of heroin users
doubled as the drug industry boomed.

The report added that only 10 per cent of drug users surveyed had
received any kind of drug treatment, even though 90 per cent felt they
needed it.

Drug addiction treatment centres available in 21 of Afghanistan's 34
provinces could provide treatment for only a little more than 10,000
addicts, Ibrahim Azhar, a deputy counter-narcotics minister told reporters.

AgenceFrance-Presse