DRUGS ARE RUSSIA'S TICKING TIME BOMB

MOSCOW - Hidden inside cabbages, hollowed walnuts, even the bellies of
desperately poor pregnant women, Afghan heroin steadily flows into Russia,
joining a stream of illegal drugs that officials warn is a growing threat
to the nation's stability.

Over the past five years, Russia has become a major way station on the
trafficking route from Afghanistan to European markets.

After a monthlong lull at the start of the war in Afghanistan last fall,
the trade has picked up again, Russian police say. They report seizing
1,100 pounds of heroin so far this year, along with more than 2,000 pounds
stopped on the border between Afghanistan and the former Soviet republic of
Tajikistan.

"We expect a flood of drugs, which are now growing in Afghanistan, in the
second half of the year," said Oleg Kharichkin, deputy director of the
Russian Interior Ministry's narcotics division.

Afghanistan isn't the only culprit. Traffickers use organized-crime
channels to ship cocaine from Latin America through Russian seaports to
Europe and the United States. Peddlers bring in the stimulant ephedrine
from China. Amphetamines and other synthetic drugs come from Europe,
especially Poland. Ukrainians, Lithuanians and Belarusians smuggle in poppy
straw.

But it is Afghan heroin that has become the narcotic of choice for addicts
in Russia, where more than 3 million people are estimated to be hooked on
drugs. That is nearly 2.1 percent of the population, which compares to 1.6
percent in the United States, as estimated by the U.S. Office of National
Drug Control Policy.

Prevention programs are nearly nonexistent, and the decade following the
collapse of the Soviet Union has seen the steady closure of
government-funded youth clubs and recreation centers that kept many
children and teenagers out of trouble.

Seventy percent of Russia's 450,000 officially registered addicts are 25
and younger, and most start using drugs at age 14 or 15.

Militants Financed

Another worry for Russia is that the heroin trade finances numerous
militant groups along the country's restive southern flank, threatening
security within Russia and its neighbors.

"Extremists need a lot of cash. For them, drugs are fast, easy, good
money," said Lt. Gen. Konstantin Totsky, chief of Russia's border guards.

Carried by donkeys and human couriers across the Pyandzh River and the
Pamir Mountains, which form Afghanistan's northern border with Tajikistan,
heroin is then smuggled over the mountains of Uzbekistan or Kyrgyzstan into
Kazakstan, and from there across the sparsely patrolled 4,435-mile frontier
with Russia. The U.S.-Mexican border is half as long and much less rugged.

Russia has 10,700 border guards monitoring the Tajik-Afghan border, along
with 10,000 Russian soldiers. Hardly a day goes by without a skirmish. Some
drug couriers are killed, while others escape back into Afghanistan,
abandoning their precious cargoes for the troops to burn.

"At present, on the border of Afghanistan and Tajikistan, there are about
seven tons of opium and almost two tons of heroin already warehoused and
ready for transport to Russia and Europe," said Kharichkin, the Interior
Ministry official.

Russia is seeking money from the United Nations and Western nations to
strengthen security on the drug routes. Negotiations also are under way to
provide satellite-imaging information on poppy cultivation to the Afghan
government, said Lt. Gen. Alexander Sergeyev, chief of the Interior
Ministry's anti-trafficking department.

In the meantime, smugglers are spreading drugs across Russia. Besides
Moscow and St. Petersburg, heroin gangs concentrate on cities in the oil
and gas regions of Siberia and the Far North, where salaries are higher and
potential markets richer.

One major crossroads in the trade is the Ural Mountains city of
Yekaterinburg, about 135 miles north of the Kazak border and a gateway
between Asia and the more densely populated European part of Russia. The
city attracts seasonal workers from Central Asia, who police say run
drug-smuggling businesses out of the city's wholesale produce market. Men,
women and children take part.

"More and more we're seeing women in early stages of pregnancy carrying
drugs. For $500 they're prepared to carry heroin in their abdominal
cavities," said Fyodor Anikeyev, an officer in the Yekaterinburg narcotics
squad. "Seeing their pale, unhealthy look, agents (at the airport)
naturally pick them out, but doctors refuse to X-ray them so the babies
won't be harmed."

Official corruption also plays a role. Nazir Salimov, head of the
Yekaterinburg squad, said two top Tajik police officials were arrested in
the city in June for trying to sell a large consignment of heroin.

The same month, in Tajikistan, a former deputy defense minister was charged
with drug trafficking after allegedly ordering use of a military helicopter
to drop off 175 pounds of opium and a pound of heroin.

Activists working with addicts allege Russian officials are deeply
involved, too.

"There's a huge level of corruption in law-enforcement agencies at all
levels in Russia," said the Rev. Anatoly Berestov, a neuropathologist and
Russian Orthodox monk who runs a drug-treatment center at the 17th-century
Krutitskoye church in central Moscow.

Interior Ministry officials deny the charge.

Targeting Addicts

Berestov and others also complain that the main police effort appears aimed
at punishing addicts, not traffickers.

Possessing even a small amount of marijuana means up to three years in
prison. Helping a friend get the drug counts as distribution - seven to 15
years.

"Why is there enough money to maintain these prisoners but not enough for
real anti-drug campaigning?" said Anna, a 23-year-old former heroin addict
who works at the Krutitskoye center.

Experts and addicts alike blame the spiritual crisis and particularly the
permissiveness that gripped the country after the Soviet collapse,
including an explosion of pornography, movie and TV violence, and
unfettered teenage drinking.

"This atmosphere of 'everything is permitted' has overwhelmed everyone,"
said Anna, who declined to give her last name. "Plus there's the situation
at home, where parents are running around trying to figure out how to make
enough money to feed their children."

Of the few rehab programs, almost all charge money for treatment, in
contrast to the Soviet era, when alcohol and drug treatment was both free
and mandatory.

Berestov appears often on television and radio and travels throughout
Russia. The program at his 4-year-old center, which is financed entirely by
donations, includes psychological and medical counseling, work at the
center or a nearby monastery, and a lot of prayer. He claims an 80 percent
cure rate for the 3,000 addicts treated.

"They're all former criminals, even murderers," the monk said matter-
of-factly. "But I'm not a police officer. I'm a priest, and my role is to
repair."

The police say their efforts are beginning to bear fruit. Heroin is
becoming harder to get, and its price is rising - reaching about $30 per
gram in Moscow, three times the price in 1999.

Doctors say the number of newly registered drug users 18 and under fell by
about a third last year and that deaths by overdose, arrests of suspects in
a drug-induced state and drug-provoked psychoses are also down.

But Berestov, who gets new patients every day, says he has seen no letup.
If anything, he and other experts say, young people are just turning to
different substances, including strong over-the-counter medicines as well
as Russia's traditional addiction - alcohol.