NATION HIGH ON OPIUM

KABUL -- With a grandfather, a father, a mother and a brother who have
spent much of their lives addicted to opium, it is little surprise this
Afghan family's youngest member has also fallen under the drug's spell.

Except for one thing: she is 15 months old.

"All the time she is crying, so I give her just a little bit of opium to go
to sleep," said 30-year-old Suhaila, cradling her daughter in a squalid
block of flats in eastern Kabul.

Opium use among all age groups is on the rise in Afghanistan, which,
according to the United Nations, produces more of the drug than any other
nation, despite a ban on cultivating opium poppies.

But in a poor country where the anti-narcotics effort is focused on
combating supply, not demand, there are few places to treat addicts who
need help.

"It's a big problem here; there aren't many places to go to," says Mohammad
Stanekzai, programme manager at the Nejat drug rehabili-tation centre in
Kabul, the only aid agency in the capital established specifically to help
addicts.

"We have 130 people on the waiting list for in-house care, but we've only
got 10 beds."

Depressed

The government's equivalent, the Drug Dependency Treatment Centre, has just
20 beds adjoining a mental hospital. Afghan authorities - trying to rebuild
a war-ruined nation - are trying to determine how big the problem really is.

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime in Kabul is carrying out a study to
determine the number of addicts in the capital.

The report has yet to be completed, but the UNODC deputy representative to
Afghanistan, Adam C Bouloukos, said one trend is clear.

"We're definitely seeing an increase in opium use - eating, smoking,
injecting - particularly among refugees in Pakistan and Iran and returning
refugees.

"It's understandable in the sense that you've got depressed populations.
They've lost everything, they're living in refugee camps with thousands of
other people with no sanitation, no food, no water, bad conditions."

Before returning to Afghanistan last year, Suhaila, too, was living with
her family in a refugee camp near Peshawar, in neighbouring Pakistan.

Conditions in Kabul are hardly better. Suhaila lives in a ruined building
that was never completed because of civil war in the 1990s.

Her husband has been an addict since birth and has smoked regularly for
most of his adult life.

When he married Suhaila, he offered her pieces of raw opium, a dark
substance, to cure minor ailments such as coughs or headaches.

Opium has long been used as a traditional medicine in Afghanistan,
particularly in remote regions with little or no access to health care. It
can also fight off the cold and even curb appetite. But it is addictive.

"I first ate it two or three times a week, whenever I felt bad," Suhaila
said. "But after two to three years, I ate it every day."

While opium can kill if taken in excess, it rarely does.

Economically, however, it can be devastating - especially to families which
are jobless, in need of food and virtually broke.

Stanekzai says addicts can spend as much as 50 afghanis, or $1 (about
R7.44), on the drug a day - a day's pay for civil servants and day
labourers alike.

Starves

Another mother living beside Suhaila, 27-year-old Kamela, says her soldier
husband funds his habit - he smokes as many as 20 times a day - by endless
borrowing.

"All the time he's thinking of opium. He's not thinking of our family,"
Kamela says.

"He comes home and says he'll buy opium first and then try to buy us bread."

Like many refugees, she relies on a tightly knit community of neighbours,
including close relatives, to ensure that nobody starves.

A few months ago, nurses from Nejat arri-ved at Suhaila's sprawling complex
of flats and offered help.

They gave medicine to her and her husband to beat back the craving for
opium and ease the pain of withdrawal. A similar regimen will soon be
administered to her daughter, but she has yet to stop feeding her the drug.

It's unclear what effect opium can have on a child that young, but
Stanekzai says the drug could stunt mental development and growth, and make
a child exceedingly lethargic.

"Some mothers just don't know what effect it has on a baby," Stanekzai
said. "Others know it's dangerous, but they just want to remove this
problem - a baby crying, disturbing their work - from the present."