Baridad’s decision to stop taking heroin and check into rehab came courtesy of a Taleban encirclement. The Afghan policeman, 23, was based in Kajaki, northern Helmand, and had already been addicted to the drug for two years when Taleb insurgents surrounded the region last summer, severing overland supply routes.

“Five of us from the station’s hundred-strong force were addicted,” he said. “We used to buy heroin from the engineers working on the nearby dam. Then the Taleban came and we were surrounded for months.

“Heroin and fighting get complicated. I used to smoke it in the morning, fight, then smoke again at night. But this year the supply began to dry up and I got weaker. Finally I couldn’t do anything at all. Detoxing and fighting are impossible. I couldn’t go on.”

Sickened by withdrawal, he managed to lie his way on to a British army helicopter bringing supplies to the Kajaki enclave, and flew back to Lashkar Gar, Helmand’s capital. A month ago he checked in to the UK-funded Wadan rehabilitation clinic, a tiny, 20-bed residential centre. Among his fellow addicts, who include at least one other police officer, Baridad’s background is of little importance.

“Everyone is equal to us,” said Rozatullah Zia, the clinic’s director. “Former Taleban or policeman, they are all the same: addicts who need help.”

Established in May last year, Wadan is the only clinic of its kind in Lashkar Gar. Its month-long treatment programme includes everything from enforced cold baths and Islamic studies, to the one-to-one pyschotherapy more familiar to Western addicts.

There are more than 800 addicts on the waiting list for treatment at the Wadan alone, reflecting the scale of southern Afghanistan’s problem.

Opium has been a part of most Afghan households traditionally, used either to cure pain or alleviate the boredom of jobs involving repetitive and uncomfortable manual work, such as carpet weaving and farming.

Yet since the fall of the Taleban in 2001 sveral factors have contributed to ignite heroin addiction throughout the country. First, thousands of refugees, returning to Afghanistan from Iran and Pakistan, where heroin use is profligate, brought their addictions home.

Secondly, processing labs used to refine opium into heroin, which until a few years ago were based in neighbouring countries, are now thriving inside Afghanistan, increasing the drug’s availability dramatically. Furthermore, high levels of unemployment, war trauma, and wide-scale bereavement have fuelled the population’s appetite for the drug.

Though intravenous use as yet remains rare the powderi, as heroin-smoking addicts are referred, can buy low-grade brown heroin for as little as $2 (£1) a gram. High-grade white or crystal costs $16 a gram.

Afghanistan now displays every sign of following in the footsteps of Iran, where society is ravaged by addiction. A 2005 United Nations survey estimated that, nationwide, 3.8 per cent of Afghanistan’s population were habitual drug users, a figure including more than 200,000 opiate addicts.

Commonly, heroin was found to be the preserve of males, and opium used by women.

“The heroin problem is definitely getting worse,” said Dr Zia. “We already had 70,000 opium addicts in Helmand. In some districts in every fourth or fifth family you have at least one addict. Here about 5 per cent of the population are addicted.”

Children are becoming increasingly affected. Infants are commonly given opium to stop them crying, while at an early age child labourers in the poppy fields become familar with licking the resin from their fingers during harvest. Dr Zia has consulted two families in which every member, child and adult, is a heroin addict.

So far Wadan can offer residential places only to men. Because of the strictures of the conservative Pashtun society, the size of the clinic is considered too small for male and female addicts to cohabit. However, it has treated more than 300 Afghans, mostly women, in their homes as part of an outreach project, and this year will move to a larger building that is hoped to include a wing for women.

Although Dr Zia claims a high success rate in treating addicts, drug rehabilitation is rare in Afghanistan. Wadan runs four other clinics in the country, but the stigma of addiction and the scarcity of rehab centres mean that few addicts will ever find a way to check their drug use. Paradoxically, many young male addicts, finding themselves ostracised by their families, seek sanctuary by joining the police.

“Most of our police in the far districts are addicts,” said Dr Zia. “One of our addicted officers, Fayezullah, told me that the safest place for an addict is a police post or check-point. Stop a car, stop a bike, take some money, buy some heroin.”

Rising tide

920,000 estimated addicts in Afghanistan

5 rehabilitation clinics in Afghanistan, with fewer than 100 beds in total

10% Afghanistan farmland dedicated to growing opium

157,000 extra hectared (388,000 acres) devoted to farming opium since defeat of the Taliban

Sources: Afghanistan Ministry of Counter-Narcotics; United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime

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