Afghanistan faces growing addiction problem

The heroin fumes rose, gray and twisting, into the nostrils of Mohammed Jawad Rezaie.

He inhaled and relaxed. For a few moments, Rezaie stopped scratching at his lice-infested groin. He lost interest in the blackened, rotting toes of his left foot, which had mesmerized him minutes earlier.

In another room in the shell-pocked ruins of the former Russian Cultural Center in downtown Kabul, 27-year-old Anwar injected a mixture of heroin and water into a bulging vein in the thin wrist of a man called Hussein.

Anwar, who injects addicts in exchange for heroin, withdrew the needle as Hussein's head slumped forward. Hussein began to tremble, and Anwar wrapped him in a hug, holding him until he relaxed and dropped into a peaceful stupor.

A junkie named Jaffer who had just been injected in the neck squatted next to them, his head cocked back, his eyes staring blankly at the ceiling.

Afghanistan is notorious as the world's leading producer of opium and heroin, most of it shipped to Europe. Less well-documented is the country's own addiction epidemic. As many as a million Afghans, mostly men but increasing numbers of women, are addicted to heroin or opium, according to Afghan counter-narcotics police.

"It's bad, and it's getting worse," said Syedagul Stanekzai, the harried project manager of a men's drug rehabilitation center in Kabul, the capital.

The center has 100 beds in a city where thousands of addicts roam the streets. He cited varied reasons for the increase in addiction rates: lack of security, a high unemployment rate, general hopelessness and the wide availability of cheap drugs.

A hit of opium sells for as little as 10 afghanis, or 20 cents. A dose of heroin sells for 60 cents. In certain neighborhoods, drugs can be bought as easily as a cup of tea.

Drug use has been practically decriminalized.

"We prefer persuasion," Lt. Mohammed Edriss of the Kabul counter-narcotics police said in the cultural center's maze of crumbling buildings. He watched an addict named Nazir light a narrow ribbon of heroin and inhale the smoke

"See this?" the lieutenant said, snatching a packet of heroin from Nazir's hand. "You can get it anywhere. So why arrest these people? They'll just go back and get more."

The lieutenant returned the packet to Nazir. "Better they should get treatment, not jail."

He gave Nazir a gentle shove, ordering him to stop smoking and go to a rehab center.

Almost every day, Edriss and his officers try to herd the bedraggled addicts from the gloom and stench of the cultural building to a nearby rehab center, if not for treatment, then at least for showers and food.

The Afghan government has long considered drug addiction a uniquely Western vice. Officials never tire of telling Westerners that if it wasn't for the market for narcotics in their countries, Afghan farmers would have no incentive to grow poppies.

But the flow of drugs into Afghanistan's own cities has changed attitudes, said Gen. Shaista Turabi, director of the counter-narcotics police.

"My suggestion would still be for the U.S. and Europe to decrease demand," Turabi said in his spacious Kabul office, with new radio-equipped police SUVs parked outside, provided by Western aid. "But I can also say that addiction is a big problem in Afghanistan, too, and a big drain on the whole country."

Since 2002, Western nations have tried to eradicate Afghan opium poppy fields -- a multibillion-dollar effort that Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, has called "a waste of money."