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PAS : KE ARAH PEMERINTAHAN ISLAM YANG ADIL
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Assalamualaikum,
Bertapa dadah memusnahkan
masyarakat Islam kita.
: )
Subject:
Adding to Pakistan's Misery, a Heroin Epidemic
Date:
Thu, 20 Apr 2000 08:08:30 -0500 (CDT)
From:
Islamic News and Information Network <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Assalamu'alaikum,
Adding to Pakistan's Misery, a Heroin Epidemic
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
By BARRY BEARA
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/asia/041900pakistan-drugs.html
KARACHI, Pakistan -- Raees Khan sleeps most nights on a pillow of dust.
His
home is a median strip along the busy Liaquadabad Road, across from a
mosque. A little before dawn a loudspeaker announces the first call to
prayer, a reminder to the holy that before Allah all men are naught.
This noisy summons fails to awaken Mr. Khan. Though a Muslim, he does
not
pray five times a day. Other rituals command him: emptying a tiny bag of
heroin into a plastic bottle cap, adding water and heating it on a small
flame, drawing the hypnotic broth into a syringe, hunting for a plump
vein
and feeding into it the fluid warmth. After a decade of addiction,
locating
the vein is the hardest part. Most of those conduits have long ago
collapsed. One recent morning, Mr. Khan, 30, and a helpmate searched his
arms, hands, feet and groin before settling on a faint line in his right
biceps. The shot was transporting. His head lowered sideways as if he
were
laying it on a platter.
But a few moments later he was up again and grumbling dissatisfaction.
He
scavenged in his pocket for another bag of the brown powder, and this
time
he inhaled it. "I am flying now," he said, though this was merely the
view
from within. Actually, he was staggering toward the street, just another
Karachi dope fiend on open display. Pakistan, which does not lead the
world
in much, is most likely No. 1 when it comes to heroin addicts. Reliable
country-by-country numbers have not been compiled, with social science a
low
priority in the third world and addicts hard to poll anyway.
But the United Nations estimates that 1.5 million heroin addicts live in
this nation of 150 million, the unfortunate result of geography,
geopolitics, corruption and poverty. "I think we can be quite definite
that
Pakistan has the largest heroin population," said Bernard Frahi, who
heads
the United Nations drug program office for South and West Asia. "And
whatever the total is, it seems to be getting quite a bit worse."
Karachi itself, a city notorious for lawlessness, political killings and
gargantuan slums, has 600,000 heroin addicts, according to the nation's
anti-narcotics officials. And while that total seems exaggerated -- for
it
would mean that about 1 in 15 adult males is hooked -- the city is
replete
with the dope-addled in each section of its troubled sprawl. Addicts
are
everywhere and nowhere, easy to overlook from a car but impossible to
miss
on foot. They are huddled on the sidewalk, under the bridge, behind the
truck, against the fence, along the prime begging space beside the
shrine.
"Heroin is written in my fate," said Mohammad Aslam, 40, who had a
needle in
his arm and a prayer cap on his head. "No one can change the decree of
fate." Their days fill with the customary gamut of degradation: the
craving, the begging, the scheming. Mr. Aslam has been shunned by his
wife -- or perhaps it is the other way around. He sleeps near the city's
main drainage ditch, just a few feet from raw sewage. With the veins in
their extremities withered, addicts often tug down their pants,
injecting
near the groin. Jan Sher, 29, does this. He is a theatrical man who
lives
beneath the girders of a walkway. Dirt is on him like plaster and there
are
crescents of sweat under his arms, but he handles a syringe so deftly
that
it may as well be an extra finger.
"This is Karachi," he said, letting the needle linger, drawing blood in,
letting it out. "You can drop your pants in a police station and shoot
up,
and no one would care." A dose of heroin, known as a token, costs about
$1 -- about a tenth of what it would cost in Brooklyn. The quality is
bad,
with barbiturates often mixed in. But with the price so cheap, a
three-bag
habit is affordable to anyone whose hands can beg small change or steal
an
item off a shelf. A syringe, heroin's most efficient conveyance, sells
for
10 cents. Addicts reuse them until the point becomes painfully blunt.
They
know the sermons about hepatitis and H.I.V., but many still share
needles,
playing the odds in a kind of microbiological roulette. The more
favored
practice, though, is referred to as panni, or what in America is called
chasing the dragon. The heroin is spread on a strip of tin foil and
heated
from below. The addicts, who are overwhelmingly male, inhale the fumes
through a straw, sniffing at the curl of smoke like an excited hound
following a scent.
An entire colony of panni sniffers has settled into the concrete hollows
beneath the Sohrab Bridge, along the main highway. Dogs roam all over,
and
while the attraction for them may be in the ample rubbish, addicts
insist
that the animals themselves are hooked. At the steps around Aurangzeb
Park,
in the oldest part of the city, a hundred or so addicts gather each
evening.
>From a distance they appear to be in prayer, kneeling over candles or
matchsticks, entering a trance in the delicate sadness of nightfall.
Mixed
among the bedraggled are a few addicts who have clean clothes and
barbered
hair. They work at jobs and go home to families. While their normal
lives
have yet to be entirely forfeited, they seem without illusions about the
eventual surrender. "There are more of us every day," Faeez Hussain
said a
little boastfully, "and people from good families, too. You'll find
university graduates among us."
Merchants with stores near the park are exasperated. "We have had some
of
these people beaten, to the point of almost killing," said Abid Ahmed.
"But
they get up as if nothing had happened. Beating them is of no use. They
will
have to die on their own." The police do not arrest the addicts, though
the
constables of Karachi are very much feared by them. They extort cash.
Two
with machine guns walked toward an older addict with one eye, Sharif
Uzzaman. He prudently scurried away.
"Most days they rough us up and take our money," he said. "They tell us:
if
you can afford to pay 50 rupees for heroin, you can afford to pay 20
more as
a bribe." Such accusations are not to be doubted. Shabbir, an addict in
a
pressed shirt, stepped forward to vouch for their truth. He pulled his
police identification card from his wallet, showing his constable
number. He
was due at the station in a few hours. "A policeman is paid only 4,200
rupees [$84] a month, and a man with a family cannot subsist on this,"
he
said. "We have no options but to take bribes where we can."
Drug enforcement is usually left to Pakistan's Anti-Narcotics Force,
which
is largely a military operation. Its focus is on major busts, and its
chief,
Maj. Gen. Zafar Abbas, cites record seizures: "Our force is small, but
1999
was a very good year." Addicts scoff at those efforts, for heroin is as
available as air. Even the bigger amounts are easily obtained in
well-known
spots like the Ilyas Goth shantytown, a tight cluster of wood and
concrete
shacks. An extraordinary percentage of the residents -- men, women and
sometimes children -- are hooked, entire families pulled under.
A melancholy addict named Lassi watched her daughter Fatima, 25, snort
dope
through a ballpoint pen with its ink cartridge removed. "I did not force
her
into addiction," Lassi said defensively, pulling at her shawl. "It was
her
own decision." Hashish and opium claim another two million addicts in
Pakistan, the government says, and for many users heroin is but the next
step. From there the rungs to come seem to be ones of methodology, from
sniffing to panni to the needle.
However far along, addicts are often unsure how to assess their sins.
There
is a metaphysical dispute about what qualifies as "haram," forbidden by
the
laws of Islam. Abdul Qadir, an addict and a locally infamous car thief,
was
wearing a clean white prayer cap. He argued, as many do, "The Holy
Prophet,
peace be upon him, did not prohibit drugs. He prohibited intoxicants,
and by
that he meant only liquor." Indeed, a ban on alcohol is commonly cited
as a
reason for Pakistan's heroin problem. In 1979, as part of his so-called
Islamization program, the military dictator Mohammad Zia ul-Haq declared
drinking to be a "heinous crime," punishable by public flogging.
For many, drugs became the substitute for drinks. That same year,
geopolitics turned this part of the world upside down. A strict Shiite
Muslim government took power in Iran, and many of that country's drug
kingpins found Pakistan a welcome refuge. Then, in December, the Soviet
Union invaded Afghanistan, and the region became a hot spot for the cold
war. The Americans and Saudis financed the Afghan resistance through
Pakistani intermediaries who sometimes found synergy between the heroin
and
weapons trades.
Throughout the 1980's and much of the 1990's Pakistan was a world leader
in
the production of opium, from which heroin is derived. That distinction
has
since passed to Afghanistan, which last year grew 75 percent of the
global
yield. To reach the world market, the drugs are smuggled out along
well-trod
roads and donkey trails into neighboring Pakistan and Iran. Their
populations have become convenient local customers. General Abbas said
the
opium trade across Pakistan's porous border was impossible to stop.
Besides, he lamented, "the main problem is a shortage of drug
rehabilitation." By any measure that would be an understatement.
Karachi
has the capacity to treat only 500 addicts, said Dr. Saleem Azam, a
highly
respected physician who gave up a prosperous medical practice to treat
drug
patients with his own waning funds. "The people in the government are
indifferent to drug rehabilitation," he said. "They say there is no
money,
but they always have plenty to spend on the military." Mr. Frahi of the
United Nations has found much of the same lack of interest among
international donors. "Other countries are willing to fund law
enforcement
projects, but we can't raise a penny for prevention or treatment," he
said.
Most heroin addicts here, like those around the world, profess a desire
to
enter a drug program, anything to escape the sheer everydayness of the
despotic routine, the relentless foraging for money, the guilty
uncoupling
from their families. But even if such programs were available, failure
rates are high against so formidable a sickness. The urge to be helped
usually proves subordinate to more immediate cravings. Raees Khan, the
man
who lives by the mosque, has tried drug treatment three times, but it
involved nothing more than weeklong stays in a hospital and sedatives to
moderate the agony of withdrawal. On release he was quickly back to a
fatalistic apathy.
"Now I believe this is the way my entire life will be lived," he said
decisively. In a moment of reflection, Mr. Khan felt a need to visit
his
mother, whose modest home is off an alleyway north of the airport. She
was
reluctant to let her son through the door. She loves him, she said, but
his
addiction is a family disgrace. "I have a young daughter, and soon we
will
need to find her a proper husband," she explained. "We will make a much
poorer match because of our shame." But finally she softened and
allowed
him inside. He once had such potential, she said wistfully, stroking his
shoulder.
He knew how to weld. He could do electrical work. She brought her son a
glass of water sweetened with red syrup, and they began to speak warmly
to
each other. As he left, he was able to wheedle the equivalent of $4.
Not
long after, he used his nose to empty another bag of heroin, forgetting
his
family again and retreating into his medicated self. He was soon
nodding
out, his eyeballs rising in his head like two balloons set adrift.
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