RETURNED REFUGEES SWELL RANKS OF ADDICTS

Heroin Factories Spring Up In Afghanistan As Local Demand Soars

KABUL -- Asadullah shivers, but not on account of the icy Kabul morning.
Frowning intently, he unwinds his orange turban, knots it in a ligature
around his right biceps, and starts pumping his arm. He stops to examine
the crook, where a blue tattoo of a girl's face is pocked with ugly black
scabs. But Asadullah, 27, cannot raise a vein. Taking a syringe loaded with
heroin from his nine-year-old nephew, Asadullah starts stabbing into the
scabs, feeling for a vein. Then, he unties the ligature, and knots it
around his left arm. "It's too difficult," he hisses. "I hardly have any
veins left."

Asadullah's left arm is equally damaged. Swapping the ligature, he takes 40
minutes to strike a vein. As the heroin slides into him, he sighs, and
slumps back against the mud wall. The pretty tattooed face is now invisible
beneath a pool of blood.

Asadullah is what many of Afghanistan's opium farmers deny the existence
of: an Afghan heroin addict. Nor is he alone. Though an estimated 95% of
Britain's heroin derives from Afghan opium; still 90% of Afghan opium
remains in the region, according to a recent CIA report. Iran has an
estimated 2 million opium and heroin addicts. Afghanistan could suddenly
have 1 million, the report suggests, mainly among the 3 million refugees
who have returned from Iran and Pakistan over the past two years since the
fall of the Taliban.

"Historically, Afghanistan never had a drug problem. This is something
new," said Adam Boulakos, the deputy chief of the UN Office on Drugs and
Crime in Kabul. "Among returning refugees especially, we're seeing a
massive increase in drug addiction."

Asadullah's story is in many ways typical. He began taking heroin eight
years ago, shortly after fleeing to Iran. "It's hard being in a foreign
place: so many of my family were missing, and the Iranians didn't really
want us," said Asadullah, now lucid after his fix.

Sorrows

"There were dealers everywhere, even the police used to bring drugs to our
camp. It was a way of forgetting our sorrows."

Despite their troubles, many Afghan refugees prospered in Iran, working on
construction sites to fund their new habits. "Almost all the builders in
Iran are Afghan, and most take heroin," Asadullah said. Since he returned
to Afghanistan three months ago, life has been hard. He has no job, and
only UKP40 saved up to sustain his UKP4 - or half a gramme - a day habit.

Shame

"And there's another problem," Asadullah said. "Iran was like living in a
different world; but here my family's friends can see what I've become, and
that brings us shame. I'll never be able to marry while I'm on heroin."

As local demand soars, so Afghanistan's drug industry is adapting, by
processing records amounts of heroin. "Again, historically almost all
Afghan opium was processed into heroin in neighbouring countries," Mr
Boulakos said. "But we're now seeing signs of a significant increase in
heroin processed here."

Around a dozen heroin factories were dismantled near the Pakistan border
after the harvest of this year's opium crop - the second biggest to date -
according to Afghan police sources. But with Afghanistan's new government
still barely functioning outside Kabul and corruption endemic, no Afghan
has yet been convicted on drug charges. During the harvest, according to
diplomats in Kabul, the then police chief of northern Badhakshan province
maintained a heroin factory in his garden.

"The heroin's better in Iran than here in Kabul," said Majit, 27, another
returnee. "But at least it's easy to find, in the bazaar, in the street,
anywhere," he said, shortly after injecting his groin with heroin. After 10
years as an addict, he explained, the veins in his limbs had collapsed
entirely.

Nor are Afghan women immune to the new contagion. "Educated women,
traditional women, even those wearing burkas, they are all returning as
addicts," said Laila Omeed, a social worker who works with drug addicts in
Kabul, after spending four years working with refugee addicts in Pakistan.
"Most Afghan women have lost relatives, children, homes, and so they take
drugs for consolation. It's a disaster: our society is disintegrating."

At the 10-bed Nejat drug rehabilitation centre, where Ms Omeed works,
around 100 male addicts have been through detox this year, and 400 female
addicts have been counselled in outreach projects. Naheda, 27, was one of
these lucky few, and has been clean for almost a year. She started eating
opium in a Pakistani refugee camp nine years ago, she said, as solace for
her husband's beatings. "It stopped my body hurting," said Naheda, speaking
through the cotton visor of a grey burka. "But it also made me lazy, and I
stopped looking after my [six] children, so my husband beat me more."

Behind Naheda, against the centre's whitewashed wall, 30 addicts are being
vetted for rehabilitation. "Can I speak?" said an old man, interrupting the
social worker's talk. "He's my son, he should be looking after me," he
said, pointing at a glassy-eyed youth. "But, he can't do anything, he can't
even get out of bed. So I will look after him until I die. And then what
will he do?".