POPPY NATION SEES SPIKE IN HEROIN ADDICTIONS

Explosion In Numbers Includes Afghan Children Working In Fields

KABUL, Afghanistan - As brothers Abdul Jabar and Abdul Sitar crouch
on the floor of their spartan Kabul living room, each light up a
small heroin cigarette and draw deeply on the powerful drug.

Nearby, several of their 11 small children watch impassively. For the
kids, this is nothing unusual. Their fathers have been addicted to
heroin, and largely incapacitated by it, since long before they were born.

Two of the older boys, who look about eight or nine, generate the
family's only income by selling products off a cart after school.

"Because of this thing, I can't work, I can't talk sometimes. I eat
stones," says Abdul Jabar, who later illustrates his odd compulsion
by swallowing three small rocks. He says he usually passes them
without incident.

"If I knew I would be in this condition, I wouldn't have used this
drug. If they paid me $10 million, I wouldn't have used this drug."

Yet the two brothers, and a third who successfully went through
rehabilitation recently, are far from being alone in their plight.

Despite being a strict Muslim country, Afghanistan is suffering from
a boom in heroin addiction.

The international community has sought to crackdown on the war-weary
nation's record poppy crops, now serving 90 per cent of the world's
demand, but the abundant supply of heroin's main raw ingredient has
taken a terrible toll at home.

An influx of Afghan refugees who became addicted in Iran and in
Pakistan, the trauma and physical ravages of nearly 30 years of war,
and grinding poverty are also blamed for the rising number of heroin addicts.

"It is not only the rest of the world that is suffering. We are
suffering; it is a big problem for us as well," says Dr. Tariq
Suliman, who heads the Nejat Centre, a local rehab clinic.

"Now on each and every street we have people who suffer from drug
addiction .. It is spreading fast and it is difficult to control."

And it is not always intentional.

In one case, a father became perplexed by the sickness that afflicted
his three children -- aged seven, nine and 15 -- whom he had sent
into the poppy fields to work. He eventually brought them to Nejat,
where Suliman diagnosed classic withdrawal symptoms, a result of
their contact with the poppies.

"When we told him 'Your kids are addicted,' he was very sad, and he
said 'If I was given a million Afghanis to cultivate poppies, I
wouldn't do it now."

A United Nations study in 2005 estimated there are a million Afghan
drug addicts: 50,000 using heroin, 150,000 opium, 500,000 hashish and
about 400,000 using other illicit drugs and pharmaceuticals. The
number of heroin addicts doubled in Kabul between 2003 and 2005.

And their ranks have undoubtedly swollen since then, says Suliman.

In Helmand province, a heroin factory worker would wear a blanket
around his shoulders, then shake it out at home close to his
children. They would be crying --until the blanket dispersed its
opiate dust, said Dr. Mohammad Zafar, director of demand reduction in
the Ministry of Counter Narcotics.

He laments that the international community, so focused on curbing
poppy production, has paid little heed to Afghanistan's domestic drug epidemic.

Although a number of treatment programs have cropped up since the
fall of the Taliban, waiting lists are still months long.

The Abdul brothers have been trying for six months to get into Nejat,
and worry their brother, who was treated successfully there and lives
with them, could fall off the wagon.

"If we were treated together, this problem would have been solved
very soon," says Abdul Jabar.