NEW PRIORITIES TAKE AID FROM ADDICTS

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan - This is ''a place of peace'' for the heroin addicts
of Rawalpindi, says recovering user Noman Shah.

It is a haven beside a noxious sewage ditch, crowded inside an alley where
the miserable outcasts of a dirt-poor society sniff and smoke the stupefying
fumes that get them through another day.

It is a place of running sores, of glazed and yellowed eyes, of weeping, and
hopelessness, and an elemental shame that drives these addicts into filthy
caves to satisfy their daily cravings.

Today, it is another casualty of Sept. 11.

Since then, the spigot of foreign donations to Pakistani drug programs has
dried up, social workers say. Instead, the flow has been diverted to
Afghanistan, where the more visible concerns of millions of refugees have
prompted a flood of humanitarian aid from around the globe.

At New Life, one of Pakistan's leading drug programs, foreign funding ended
March 31. Doctors no longer are available at its Rawalpindi drop-in center
to treat the chronic medical problems that afflict street addicts. Shah and
other outreach staff, although still working, are no longer being paid.

Meanwhile, the heroin supply from Afghanistan and Pakistan's frontier areas
is plentiful. For $1.50 a day, an addict in Rawalpindi can buy the four
small packages needed to produce a nodding stupor. The opiate is sniffed,
smoked, or burned on foil and inhaled.

To the hundreds of addicts huddled near the drainage ditch, the effect seems
devastating. Unconscious users lie in human waste; old men bathe their
bandaged feet in sewage; teenagers wail as they plead with Shah to cure
them.

Outside support for Pakistani drug-treatment programs - $450,000 last year
to New Life, for example - does not seem much by Western standards. But in a
country that offers little government treatment for drug abusers, the cost
of lost funding is measured in lost lives.

As a result, an estimated 400,000 street addicts in Pakistan are being left
behind as they make a deadly transition from sniffing heroin to injecting it
with shared needles, says New Life director Tariq Zafar. For Pakistan, where
HIV is all but unknown, any increase in dirty needles could be a crisis in
the making.

''There's been a slower response to HIV than to terrorism. Is it an Asian
bias?'' Zafar asks. While the West and Pakistan quickly mobilized an
alliance to fight the terrorist threat in South Asia, Zafar says, no similar
sense of urgency has greeted the skyrocketing increase of HIV and AIDS in
India and Myanm ar. Pakistan, he fears, could be next.

Part of the problem, Zafar says, lies with the culture of a country where
even charities shun the drug fight.

''We don't contact local groups because drug use is very stigmatized,'' says
Zafar, who founded New Life after ridding himself of a heroin habit in 1989.
''These are the bums of the society. They're criminals; they're off-track;
they need to suffer - that's even from their family and friends.''

Zafar's goal, ambitious as it seems, is to reach every street addict in the
drug-plagued cities of Rawalpindi, Lahore, Quetta, and Peshawar. New Life
workers such as Shah, a former addict, seek users in putrid places such as
the Rawalpindi sewer. His offer: a bath, a shave, and counseling.

No fee is charged; no one is refused help. New Life works with 5,000 addicts
a year, Zafar says, and has compiled a computer census on a wide array of
drug-related data, including specific habits, sexual histories, and criminal
records.

''Basically, what we're doing is the state's job,'' Zafar says.

Motivated clients are offered detoxification help and rehabilitation at New
Life's center in Angoori, where Zafar designed Santa Fe-style adobe
buildings to house the users.

The complex near Islamabad, built by recovering addicts, is set in a serene
glade of tall pine trees and steep hills. On this day, its administrative
staff of recovering addicts includes a medical doctor, a graduate of the
London School of Economics, and a Pakistan Army veteran.

With the loss of outside funding, the center now is supported solely through
the work of recovering clients, who restore vintage Jeeps and manufacture
woodwork and fine leather goods.

Productivity and hope, however, are the possessions of the lucky few who rid
themselves of addiction. Most clients vanish from New Life after a few
counseling sessions.

In Rawalpindi, up a steep flight of narrow stairs, the drop-in center is a
start. In one small room, four dazed men and one teenager squat or sit on
the floor. They are all heroin addicts, drawn here by hope, shame, or
desperation.

As the clients listen to Shah, a gaunt man slowly climbs the stairs. He
shakes Shah's hand, falls to the floor, and removes a shirt that reveals a
skin disease and a row of lacerations on his right forearm.

This is Shahod Ahmed, 34, a tribesman from the Afghan border who sobs as he
says he has disgraced his family. ''I have three sisters. I want to take
care of them. I want to do something for them,'' Ahmed says.

That goal might be tomorrow's fantasy, but Shah counts his presence as
today's success. Ahmed has decided - for now, at least - to join the living.