Pubdate: Sun, 25 Aug 2002
Source: Seattle Times (WA)
Copyright: 2002 The Seattle Times Company
Contact:  http://www.seattletimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/409
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/409
Author: Judith Ingram, The Associated Press

DRUGS ARE RUSSIA'S TICKING TIME BOMB

MOSCOW - Hidden inside cabbages, hollowed walnuts, even the bellies of 
desperately poor pregnant women, Afghan heroin steadily flows into Russia, 
joining a stream of illegal drugs that officials warn is a growing threat 
to the nation's stability.

Over the past five years, Russia has become a major way station on the 
trafficking route from Afghanistan to European markets.

After a monthlong lull at the start of the war in Afghanistan last fall, 
the trade has picked up again, Russian police say. They report seizing 
1,100 pounds of heroin so far this year, along with more than 2,000 pounds 
stopped on the border between Afghanistan and the former Soviet republic of 
Tajikistan.

"We expect a flood of drugs, which are now growing in Afghanistan, in the 
second half of the year," said Oleg Kharichkin, deputy director of the 
Russian Interior Ministry's narcotics division.

Afghanistan isn't the only culprit. Traffickers use organized-crime 
channels to ship cocaine from Latin America through Russian seaports to 
Europe and the United States. Peddlers bring in the stimulant ephedrine 
from China. Amphetamines and other synthetic drugs come from Europe, 
especially Poland. Ukrainians, Lithuanians and Belarusians smuggle in poppy 
straw.

But it is Afghan heroin that has become the narcotic of choice for addicts 
in Russia, where more than 3 million people are estimated to be hooked on 
drugs. That is nearly 2.1 percent of the population, which compares to 1.6 
percent in the United States, as estimated by the U.S. Office of National 
Drug Control Policy.

Prevention programs are nearly nonexistent, and the decade following the 
collapse of the Soviet Union has seen the steady closure of 
government-funded youth clubs and recreation centers that kept many 
children and teenagers out of trouble.

Seventy percent of Russia's 450,000 officially registered addicts are 25 
and younger, and most start using drugs at age 14 or 15.

Militants Financed

Another worry for Russia is that the heroin trade finances numerous 
militant groups along the country's restive southern flank, threatening 
security within Russia and its neighbors.

"Extremists need a lot of cash. For them, drugs are fast, easy, good 
money," said Lt. Gen. Konstantin Totsky, chief of Russia's border guards.

Carried by donkeys and human couriers across the Pyandzh River and the 
Pamir Mountains, which form Afghanistan's northern border with Tajikistan, 
heroin is then smuggled over the mountains of Uzbekistan or Kyrgyzstan into 
Kazakstan, and from there across the sparsely patrolled 4,435-mile frontier 
with Russia. The U.S.-Mexican border is half as long and much less rugged.

Russia has 10,700 border guards monitoring the Tajik-Afghan border, along 
with 10,000 Russian soldiers. Hardly a day goes by without a skirmish. Some 
drug couriers are killed, while others escape back into Afghanistan, 
abandoning their precious cargoes for the troops to burn.

"At present, on the border of Afghanistan and Tajikistan, there are about 
seven tons of opium and almost two tons of heroin already warehoused and 
ready for transport to Russia and Europe," said Kharichkin, the Interior 
Ministry official.

Russia is seeking money from the United Nations and Western nations to 
strengthen security on the drug routes. Negotiations also are under way to 
provide satellite-imaging information on poppy cultivation to the Afghan 
government, said Lt. Gen. Alexander Sergeyev, chief of the Interior 
Ministry's anti-trafficking department.

In the meantime, smugglers are spreading drugs across Russia. Besides 
Moscow and St. Petersburg, heroin gangs concentrate on cities in the oil 
and gas regions of Siberia and the Far North, where salaries are higher and 
potential markets richer.

One major crossroads in the trade is the Ural Mountains city of 
Yekaterinburg, about 135 miles north of the Kazak border and a gateway 
between Asia and the more densely populated European part of Russia. The 
city attracts seasonal workers from Central Asia, who police say run 
drug-smuggling businesses out of the city's wholesale produce market. Men, 
women and children take part.

"More and more we're seeing women in early stages of pregnancy carrying 
drugs. For $500 they're prepared to carry heroin in their abdominal 
cavities," said Fyodor Anikeyev, an officer in the Yekaterinburg narcotics 
squad. "Seeing their pale, unhealthy look, agents (at the airport) 
naturally pick them out, but doctors refuse to X-ray them so the babies 
won't be harmed."

Official corruption also plays a role. Nazir Salimov, head of the 
Yekaterinburg squad, said two top Tajik police officials were arrested in 
the city in June for trying to sell a large consignment of heroin.

The same month, in Tajikistan, a former deputy defense minister was charged 
with drug trafficking after allegedly ordering use of a military helicopter 
to drop off 175 pounds of opium and a pound of heroin.

Activists working with addicts allege Russian officials are deeply 
involved, too.

"There's a huge level of corruption in law-enforcement agencies at all 
levels in Russia," said the Rev. Anatoly Berestov, a neuropathologist and 
Russian Orthodox monk who runs a drug-treatment center at the 17th-century 
Krutitskoye church in central Moscow.

Interior Ministry officials deny the charge.

Targeting Addicts

Berestov and others also complain that the main police effort appears aimed 
at punishing addicts, not traffickers.

Possessing even a small amount of marijuana means up to three years in 
prison. Helping a friend get the drug counts as distribution - seven to 15 
years.

"Why is there enough money to maintain these prisoners but not enough for 
real anti-drug campaigning?" said Anna, a 23-year-old former heroin addict 
who works at the Krutitskoye center.

Experts and addicts alike blame the spiritual crisis and particularly the 
permissiveness that gripped the country after the Soviet collapse, 
including an explosion of pornography, movie and TV violence, and 
unfettered teenage drinking.

"This atmosphere of 'everything is permitted' has overwhelmed everyone," 
said Anna, who declined to give her last name. "Plus there's the situation 
at home, where parents are running around trying to figure out how to make 
enough money to feed their children."

Of the few rehab programs, almost all charge money for treatment, in 
contrast to the Soviet era, when alcohol and drug treatment was both free 
and mandatory.

Berestov appears often on television and radio and travels throughout 
Russia. The program at his 4-year-old center, which is financed entirely by 
donations, includes psychological and medical counseling, work at the 
center or a nearby monastery, and a lot of prayer. He claims an 80 percent 
cure rate for the 3,000 addicts treated.

"They're all former criminals, even murderers," the monk said matter- 
of-factly. "But I'm not a police officer. I'm a priest, and my role is to 
repair."

The police say their efforts are beginning to bear fruit. Heroin is 
becoming harder to get, and its price is rising - reaching about $30 per 
gram in Moscow, three times the price in 1999.

Doctors say the number of newly registered drug users 18 and under fell by 
about a third last year and that deaths by overdose, arrests of suspects in 
a drug-induced state and drug-provoked psychoses are also down.

But Berestov, who gets new patients every day, says he has seen no letup. 
If anything, he and other experts say, young people are just turning to 
different substances, including strong over-the-counter medicines as well 
as Russia's traditional addiction - alcohol.
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