DEADLY ASIAN HEROIN GANGS CARVE UP LUCRATIVE NEW TRADE

A Furious Row Followed An MP's Claim Last Week That the Drug Trade Was
Destroying Asian Communities. Paul Harris and Burhan Wazir Report From
Bradford, Where Young Men Fight For a Share of the Spoils - and Crack
is a Growing Menace

Abdul Salim ground a cigarette butt into the pavement. A steady
evening rain had started to fall in Bradford, but he did not go
inside. Salim is a drug dealer and there were customers to serve.

Across the street, two police cars passed by and their occupants
strained to look out of the windows. Salim, 26, watched as they drove
off down the street. 'They know what we're doing here,' said Salim.
'Sometimes they leave us alone. Sometimes they don't.'

Like his parents before him, Salim is a pioneer. But instead of
settling down to the hard-working toil of previous generations of
Asians, Salim and others have blazed a new trail into the violent
world of drug dealing. Hard drugs have arrived in Britain's Asian
communities and are rapidly creating a social problem of spiralling
crime rates and increased numbers of addicts. It has led to the
emergence of Asian drug gangs who are willing to use violence to carve
out territories and defend the enormous profits the trade can bring.
On the streets of some northern towns gang shootings have led to
public killings and a climate of fear that the drug dealers are only
too willing to encourage.

But it is not a problem confined to the North. Last December police in
London smashed a huge crack and heroin dealing operation in the East
End that controlled a trade worth millions of pounds. The gang, based
on several large Asian families, had run a 24-hour operation supplying
drugs to thousands of the capital's users. It led to local MP Oona
King describing Tower Hamlets, which has a large and deprived Asian
community, as the 'heroin capital' of the country.

In Keighley, on the northern outskirts of Bradford, the problem has
become even more lethal. A furious turf war between rival drug gangs
left four young Asians dead in the space of six months. The last to
die, 24-year-old Qadir Ahmed, was beaten and stabbed to death in the
street after his killers' shunted his car off the road as he drove
home from a football match. In some parts of Keighley heroin has been
sold for as little as ?2 a wrap as dealers have sought to entice more
users into their expanding market.

Experts say the reasons for the problem are obvious. Drug gangs emerge
wherever there is poverty, unemployment and social exclusion. It has
been the rule on white sink estates for decades and describes deprived
Asian - mainly Pakistani - communities across the north of England and
in London. 'It really should not have come as a surprise to see this
happening. It is now a real problem and growing fast,' said Kamlesh
Patel, director of the ethnicity and health unit at the University of
Central Lancashire.

Asian communities have also been hit by the phenomenon of successful
young men and women moving away as soon as they get jobs and degrees.
What they are leaving behind are poor, vulnerable and isolated
communities: places that have been invaded by gangs. They have brought
with them a culture of extreme violence and ostentatious wealth that
seems more at home in the ghettoes of Los Angeles than those of Yorkshire.

To many it would seem an appalling lifestyle. But try telling that to
Salim. He knows where his role models lie. And it is not in his
parents' family business. It is instead the gold-chain wearing drug
traffickers with their new BMW cars, souped-up hi-fi systems and
latest designer sportswear.

Salim, who dropped out of his civil engineering degree five years ago,
says he can earn up to ?200 a night. As the rain got heavier, he
pulled at his Ralph Lauren wind-breaker. 'This cost me ?150. There's
no way I could afford that if I was a student. Or even if I was
working,' he said.

Fifteen minutes later, a young Asian man drove by in a gleaming
Mercedes. 'He does the same thing as me,' said Salim, almost in awe.
'That's what I want. But you need to spend time out here in these
streets. That man's taken it to the next level.'

But the 'next level' is a violent place. The culture of 'saving face'
among drug gangs can lead to the slightest perceived insult being
punished with horrific violence. Recently two Asian men, who had been
refused entry into Bradford's Milk Bar nightclub, threatened to return
with 'shooters'. They kept their promise, spraying the club with
bullets and shooting four revellers in the legs.

The gangs are highly organised and stretch from the inner cities of
Britain to the poppy fields of Afghanistan. At the bottom of the pile
are the 'runners', usually young teenagers who make drug deliveries on
specially bought mountain bikes. Then come street dealers like Salim,
supplying runners and customers with their fixes.

Above him are the murky upper echelons of the gang world, often using
family ties with Pakistan to arrange the courier routes that bring the
drugs, nearly all heroin, back to Britain. The profits are high: a
kilo of refined heroin bought in Pakistan costs ?125,000 but is sold
in Britain for twice that amount, before being cut and sold on the
streets. If the drug is bought in the form of raw opium it is even
cheaper.

The callousness is staggering. In April a 13-year-old Bradford girl
was stopped at Heathrow. She was being used to smuggle more than ?1
million of heroin. Older people are victims too. Patel, who is one of
the few drug researchers working with Asians, has come across numerous
cases of elderly Asians being used as drug mules after they got into
financial problems.

As the gangs have grown they have also become more sophisticated. Over
the past two years Patel said he has noticed crack cocaine make its
first appearances among the Asian gangs. From concentrating on their
own communities, they have moved on to supplying white users too. It
leads to friction with other drug gangs, but the potential profits are
just too great to ignore.

For Salim the economics of the situation are obvious. The trickle of
customers is steady, despite the bad weather. Individual customers -
white and Asian - pass by and make discreet hand signals. Look-outs
stand nearby. 'If you ignore white people, then that's a lot of money
you're missing out on. Why ignore all those people who want to buy
from me? And I've found the guaras (whites) to be good customers,'
Salim said.

But there is a conspiracy of silence hanging over Britain's Asian drug
problem. From within the community few are willing to speak out, while
outsiders - such as outspoken Keighley MP Ann Cryer - are castigated
as damaging race relations. For anti-drug campaigners it is a
nightmarish situation: they have to deal with a disaster that few will
speak of, or even admit exists.

Many older Asians refuse to see there is a problem. They were brought
up in a society where immigrants got their heads down, worked hard and
ignored racism. 'It doesn't set the pattern for the whole city. Yes,
there are a few kids selling drugs. But that is to be expected,' said
Abdul Karim, 56, a Bradford shopkeeper.

But young Asians, born and brought up in Britain, have left their
parents' generation a long way behind. There has been a massive
communication breakdown. Now a few of the elderly are starting to
admit there is a crisis.

Waqas Abdullah, 56, has lived in Bradford's Manningham area for 30
years. He has tried to take his three sons to the local mosque and
instill in them values of family, religion and work. But it has not
succeeded. And he knows it. 'They've forgotten who they are. I know
that some of their friends are selling drugs to make a living. It's a
problem and the Asian community doesn't want to talk about it,' he
said.

The stigma of drug abuse is so strong in the community that some
families have sent addict children back to Pakistan to kick the habit.
Unfortunately, they discover a country grappling with its own heroin
problems and where a fix is much cheaper than in Britain. There is
also a language problem. Few of the services aimed at treating addicts
or at educating a community about the dangers of drugs or gangs are
available in south Asian languages. As a result few Asians seek
official help. 'They are simply not accessing the services as they
should be doing,' said Mahmood Hussain, a project worker with an
anti-drugs scheme in Rotherham.

On the other side of the equation are the howls of protest that
greeted Cryer's recent remarks on the drugs gripping the Asian
community in Keighley. Despite a few brave voices in support,
including some from the Muslim community, her warning that drugs gangs
were 'terrorising' Asian communities were drowned out by those
accusing her of being irresponsible and uninformed. In the wake of
last year's riots across the North, discussing the region's Asian
communities has become a politically correct minefield. A recent
Bradford University report, ironically called 'Breaking the Silences',
refused even to address the problem of whether Asians could be racist
against whites. 'It is a controversial issue on which we do not wish
to take a view,' the report said.

But those working on the frontline of the problem welcomed Cryer's
comments. 'I totally agree with what she said. This is an issue and
the community has to face up to it,' said Hussain.

A lot is at stake. 'If we don't defeat this our children will become
part of the problem. We must break this cycle,' Cryer said. She could
not be more right. Earlier this year 10-year-old pupils from St
Andrew's school in Keighley were encouraged to write about their fears
as the town faced up to the rash of drug killings that had rocked its
Asian community. The resulting letters, sent anonymously to Cryer and
the local police, made for sobering reading: 'Nearly every day I see
people in a gang coming and breaking our windows and phone boxes.
People are selling drugs everywhere. I feel trapped, unsafe, worried
and frightened,' wrote one child.

Some things are being done. In South Yorkshire Madge Wilson is setting
up a drugs helpline that will offer advice and guidance in Punjabi and
Urdu. She hopes it will help reach those most unable to deal with the
problem affecting their communities. 'There is a need for this. We
want to break down this barrier for people who are trying to seek
help,' she said.

There are countless other small-scale projects popping up all over the
country. Patel has recently completed work on a two-year scheme aiming
at tackling drugs issues in the Greater London borough of Southall.
His workers have trained dozens of women and youngsters to educate
people about the dangers of drugs and the criminality that goes with
them. He estimates they reached more than 500 families in total,
spreading a message in their own language and by members of their own
community. 'It really is all about education in the end. Education and
the opportunity to get jobs outside the business of drug dealing,'
Patel said.

There are signs that the issue is at last starting to emerge on to the
agenda: inside the Asian community and outside. But the Salims of this
world are hard to beat. The growing violence of the gangs creates
resentment and feuds that spread into the wider community. It leads to
a higher police presence in areas where relations with the police are
often already strained.

Amid the heroin and marijuana already on the streets, crack is now
making significant inroads: offering a bigger high and fatter profits.
There is still little hope of local jobs offering wages that can
compete with the sums offered by the drugs trade.

At the moment anti-drugs police in the Bradford area are talking a
tough game on the subject. 'If you get involved in drugs in this city
you are going to end up in court or a box. You will not get rich.
Bradford and Keighley are not good places to be a drug dealer,' said
Chief Superintendent Graham Sunderland.

But the situation on the ground appears very different. For Salim the
money is rolling in. He has many regular users from all over the city
who return to him several times a week and he carries on his work
largely unmolested by police or rivals. On his patch of Lumb Lane,
once notorious as a red-light area, the local dealers have arranged an
informal truce. No one wants a repeat of the Keighley slayings on the
streets of Bradford. It is not good for trade.

And the drugs business is booming.