Pubdate: Sun, 23 Apr 2000
Source: Chicago Tribune (IL)
Copyright: 2000 Chicago Tribune Company
Contact:  435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL 60611-4066
Website: http://www.chicagotribune.com/
Forum: http://www.chicagotribune.com/interact/boards/
Author: Colin McMahon

DRUG CENTER TAKING BACK RUSSIA STREETS

City Without Drugs Treats Addicts With A Controversial Program Of 
Discipline While Targeting Dealers With A Mix Of Grass-Roots Monitoring And 
Vigilantism.

YEKATERINBURG, Russia -- The Fund for a City Without Drugs makes no secret 
of its methods, but the scene at the group's drug-rehabilitation center 
still comes as a shock.

Young men lie on the springs of metal cots, their jean jackets serving as 
both sheets and mattresses. Their wrists are handcuffed to the beds. Their 
eyes are sunken, their faces pallid, their voices flat. They are prisoners, 
of both heroin and of the men who swear to help them.

An explosion in drug use is battering Russia. It fuels not only crime and 
poverty, but the spread of AIDS as well. The police-state controls of the 
Soviet-era have collapsed. Corruption and laxity among border guards, 
police and prosecutors make narcotics enforcement erratic at best.

People are fed up. And in the hard-hit Ural Mountains city of 
Yekaterinburg, they are pushing aside police and doctors in search of a 
solution.

A trio of local businessmen with controversial links to suspected organized 
crime groups have formed City Without Drugs to attack the narcotics trade 
on both ends. They treat users with a homemade program that shuns medicine 
in favor of discipline. They target dealers with a mix of grass-roots 
monitoring and hands-on vigilantism.

With a typical lack of modesty, the fund's founders say their approach 
should serve as a model not only for Russia but for the West too. Police 
and government officials have visited Yekaterinburg from other Russian 
regions to take notes on the program. Last week, City Without Drugs 
welcomed an observer from Ukraine.

Should the fund's influence grow beyond Yekaterinburg, its tactics and its 
ties to alleged mob figures could present President-elect Vladimir Putin 
with a dilemma. Putin may share the group's zeal for order. But he wants 
that order imposed by the state, and he has talked often about breaking up 
organized crime.

"My personal opinion is that dealers should be shot," said Andrei Kabanov, 
a former heroin addict and co-founder of City Without Drugs. "But being a 
loyal citizen, without a law adopted by our government, we can't do this."

With their hands so tied, Kabanov and his supporters have found other ways 
to disrupt the drug trade. They have set up a pager service to field tips 
from concerned residents--70,000 calls since it began last year. They might 
visit a suspected drug dealer at his home or confront him on the street.

"We don't have the right to arrest people," said Igor Varov, the fund's 
president. "But everybody has his own right as a citizen. If someone sells 
heroin to my son, he won't stay alive. This is my right as a father."

Some Yekaterinburg dealers have wound up brutally beaten. Some have seen 
their homes set on fire.

In one celebrated show last fall, a force of about 500 beefy men descended 
on the drug-ravaged neighborhood of Gypsy Village. Some of the men emerged 
from the Mercedes-Benzes and other luxury cars to pay house calls on 
suspected dealers. Others stood around for hours, watching people come and 
go, sending out their message.

Drug sales in the area declined.

"Well, look, there goes a narco," said Varov, wheeling his Mercedes through 
the back alleys of a neighborhood he said is rife with drug sales. "There. 
Another one. And another."

Most of the people coming and going from the apartment buildings fit 
Varov's bill, including, possibly, the cobbler whose tiny workshop opens 
out onto a sidewalk. It could be good cover for drug sales.

"What are you doing here?" Varov asked, powering down a car window to talk 
to a disheveled fellow who looked about 45 but was probably much younger. 
The man replied meekly, something about going to the store.

"Better that you get out of here before I kill you," said Varov.

He raised the window and drove off.

Last month, Sverdlovsk Gov. Eduard Rossel appointed Varov chief of a 
regional commission that includes high-ranking officials from several 
law-enforcement agencies. The idea, Varov said, is to collect information 
on drug trafficking and better target and coordinate enforcement.

Yekaterinburg police are not represented on the panel. Varov and his 
colleagues accuse them of protecting the traffickers and even dealing drugs 
themselves.

The methods of City Without Drugs are not the only concern.

When created last year, the fund received significant support from the 
Uralmash Public and Political Union, widely regarded as the political arm 
of one of Russia's most powerful organized crime gangs.

City Without Drugs, some critics alleged, was helping Uralmash consolidate 
its own grip on the lucrative heroin market by putting competing dealers 
out of business. Others contended that City Without Drugs was merely a 
political front, a public-relations campaign to burnish the thuggish image 
of a Uralmash candidate for parliament.

If so, the effort failed. Uralmash's Alexander Khabarov lost the race for 
parliament to his main and bitter rival, the chief of the local police.

"People didn't vote for Khabarov because they are afraid of him," said a 
Yekaterinburg political observer. "It's that simple."

Now, contrary to many predictions, City Without Drugs is continuing its 
campaign. Varov said Uralmash's role has fallen off. And he brushed off 
allegations about Uralmash's criminal history.

"I believe as Rossel believes," Varov said, referring to the Sverdlovsk 
governor. "If you think someone is a criminal, then prosecute him. If you 
cannot prosecute him, that means he is not a criminal."

Varov and his partners hope to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for a 
research and treatment facility in Yekaterinburg. Their current rehab 
center, now home to 64 young men, is near capacity. The waiting list, 
already at more than 300 names, is growing.

Alexander, a 23-year-old factory worker, wants to be on that list. He 
started taking drugs as a conscript during the first war in Chechnya in 
1996. By the time he was released from the army, he was a heroin addict. 
The last two years have been a struggle to hold down a job and support a 
family and a habit that eats up his measly salary.

Heroin is abundant in Yekaterinburg and, at less than $4 a fix, relatively 
cheap.

The industrial city, famous as the place where the Bolsheviks murdered the 
last Russian czar, is a transit point for drug traffickers working between 
Central Asia and Europe. Addicts interviewed at clinics in the city said 
heroin is readily available even in small towns.

Echoing Kabanov and his colleagues, the addicts and even some social 
workers dismissed the influence of the kind of risk factors associated with 
American drug usage--broken homes, for example, or poverty. They said drug 
use usually starts and takes hold because young people are curious and 
because heroin has a cool image among many Russian teenagers.

Alexander views City Without Drugs with mixed feelings. He is worried by 
the center's reputation for toughness. But his mother is desperate, and 
Alexander says he wants to care for his wife and 2-year-old child.

"I don't know what to do," said Alexander's mother, fighting back tears 
during a visit at a state-run detox clinic where Alexander is undergoing 
his fourth round of treatment. "This is not working."

So, too, says Kabanov, a former heroin addict who models the fund's rehab 
program after his own cold turkey experience. He says the medical approach 
to addiction is doomed to fail and that doctors are criticizing him merely 
to protect their turf.

"The whole world considers drug addiction a disease," said Kabanov, who was 
treated eight times at a Moscow clinic before finally beating his addiction 
on his own. "A disease assumes compassion, pity. Drug addicts do not 
deserve compassion because it is not a disease.

Many of the young men at the fund's rehab center in a wooded area on the 
outskirts of Yekaterinburg were put there by their parents. Most had tried 
treatment before, some several times, but eventually all ended up back on 
the needle.

The most recent arrivals to the center are handcuffed to their beds. They 
are fed only bread and water during their two or three weeks of withdrawal. 
They are allowed to get up three times a day to go to the bathroom.

Those who have completed the detox program offer encouragement to the new 
arrivals.

"We tell them there is no other way out," said Andrei Vershinin, 25, who 
was among the initial group of six who came to the clinic when it opened 
last December.

The young men also keep each other in line. They look up to Varov, calling 
him by a Russian term of endearment much like "Daddy." They accept the 
discipline he imposes.

"They are a family, after all," Kabanov said. "If someone does something 
wrong, he is punished in a fatherly way. You can't do it without 
punishment, because a drug addict is a scoundrel. He has to develop a reflex

"Pain once. Pain twice. Then he understands. Nothing horrible."

Varov said he expects most of the addicts to stay in the center for about a 
year. If they want to stay longer, they can.

Those like Vershinin, who says he has lost all craving for heroin, are 
allowed to walk the woods or visit a nearby lake. But they are barred from, 
say, going into central Yekaterinburg on their own.

"What do they need there?" asked Varov. "They have all they need here. All 
that is there is heroin."

Some young men have fled. But Varov and his people tracked them down and 
brought them back. Others have left and returned on their own accord. 
"There is one still missing," Varov said. "But we will find him. And we 
will haul him back."

The center is only 7 months old, so Kabanov may be too quick with his 
boasts of unprecedented results. Doctors and psychiatrists who treat 
addicts in Yekaterinburg warn that relapses are common. Kabanov's charges 
have yet to live on their own

Varov and Kabanov vow to follow their boys for as long as it takes to keep 
them clean. And few have any doubts that any missteps would mean hell to pay. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake