PAKISTAN ADDICTS HARBOR OPIUM HOPES

LAHORE, Pakistan - Abdul Karim's a tailor by training, but his
fellow heroin addicts call him ``The Doctor'' for his skill at finding
their veins.

One by one, they come to him with their drugs - low-grade heroin,
homemade cocktails of morphine and other pharmaceuticals. They roll
down their trousers, throw back their robes and wait for Karim to load
his syringe with their poisons and pump them into their thighs.

Soon, they're too high to care that Karim uses the same syringe over
and over - and that by sharing it, they're at grave risk of falling
victim to the wave of AIDS infections sweeping Pakistan.

``It keeps me away from grief and sorrows,'' said Karim, 35, who
turned to heroin after he was fired from a sewing factory.

The resurgence of the opium trade in Afghanistan worries drug
enforcers in Pakistan, where addicts are eager to get their hands once
again on high-grade heroin from across the border.

Brig. Riazullah Khan Chib, a senior official with Pakistan's
Anti-Narcotics Force, says the danger is not only more addicts but
also more cases of AIDS.

A relatively small percentage of people - 200,000 in the country of
140 million - are known to have contracted HIV, the virus that causes
AIDS, many of them through intravenous drug use. But testing is spotty
and experts fear many more are infected.

With funding scarce and illiteracy rates in Pakistan higher than 50
percent, educating addicts and others who know little about the deadly
disease is difficult.

``We are trying our best to rehabilitate drug addicts,'' Chib said.
``But this is not an easy task and can't be accomplished without
society's help and involvement.''

Heroin of high quality used to be cheap and plentiful in Pakistan. But
supplies began to dry up after the Taliban seized power in 1996 and
banned the cultivation of poppies from which heroin is derived.

Karim and other addicts who congregate on a trash-heaped back street
in the eastern city of Lahore turned to less potent substitutes,
injecting them for maximum effect.

``Fine quality heroin was available,'' said Misal Khan, 61. ``But
that's all past. Now there's none of that stuff around.''

With the ouster of the Taliban by U.S.-backed opposition forces,
however, Afghan farmers are again growing poppies - despite a ban on
drug trafficking by the interim post-Taliban government.

Karim and hundreds of other addicts in Lahore live amid stinking heaps
of garbage on the street and a park near the city's stately 17th
century Shahi Mosque. Dressed in rags, they huddle in small groups,
swapping jokes, curses and syringes. Some have lived there for 20 years.

To feed their habit, many must beg or steal. Although the heroin sold
on Lahore's streets is not as pure as it used to be, it is more
expensive. A daily dose costs 80 cents, more than enough for a good
meal.

Police occasionally round up addicts but say they don't have the
facilities to hold them. Recently, five addicts were found dead among
the trash, killed by cold.