Tajikistan Grapples With Drug Addiction

Sergei Kozlov, director of the drug addict residential treatment center "Drop-in-Center," speaks with an unidentified female drug addict in the center in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, Nov. 2, 2006. Tajikistan grapples with a surge in drug addiction. Drugs from Afghanistan, where the U.N. says opium cultivation has hit record levels, now threaten to swamp Tajikistan. ( AP Photo/Sergei Grits) (Sergei Grits - AP)

DUSHANBE, Tajikistan -- Central Asia's poorest county is also one of the world's leading transit routes for heroin, opium and other drugs from Afghanistan. Sergei Makhkamov has been caught in the flood.

"I tried it, I liked it and it went from there," said the haggard, fidgety, out-of-work 24-year-old who got hooked on heroin in 2004. "If you have the money, you can find it anywhere, anytime."

This mountainous nation already was scarred by a civil war that ended just nine years ago. Now, wounds are being inflicted by a dramatic spike in the trafficking of drugs coming out of neighboring Afghanistan bound for Russia and Europe _ and increasingly being used by Tajiks.

Makhkamov is one of 7,600 officially registered addicts in Tajikistan. But activists say the real number may be eight times higher and they warn that rising addiction and its related crime and disease are draining limited social resources in this desperately poor country.

"We're on the verge of a generalized epidemic," said Murtazokul Khidirov, a health activist involved in the fight against illegal drugs, AIDS and related diseases. "If that happens, there will be big problems."

The country's average annual per-capita income of $1,400 is the lowest in formerly Soviet Central Asia, according to the International Monetary Fund's data for 2005. As many as three-quarters of its 7 million people live in poverty, the United Nations says.

Tajikistan shares close cultural ties with Afghanistan as well as a porous, 830-mile border.

Russian guards patrolled the frontier for many years as both Afghanistan and Tajikistan were wracked by war. The Tajiks have taken over _ with U.N. help _ but doubts persist whether they can stem the tide, especially since Afghanistan's opium cultivation has reached record levels.

Officially, according to the Tajik Drug Control Agency, 7 to 8 tons of illegal drugs were seized last year, and the U.N. ranked Tajikistan fifth worldwide in heroin and morphine seizures and fourth for opium. Most experts, however, say the Tajik figures represent just a small fraction of the drugs transported through the nation.

Iran, Pakistan and other Central Asian nations are also conduits for drug smuggling from Afghanistan, but endemic corruption and poverty put Tajikistan in more danger, experts say.

"There is a problem and we are looking for help from the world community, from the United States," said Lt. Col. Avaz Uldashev, a spokesman for the Tajik Drug Control Agency.

Since the end of the 1992-97 civil war, the average age of Tajik addicts has crept downward from about 30 to 35 years old to between 20 and 29.