After the earthquake, Bam battles with heroin and Aids

obmar · After the earthquake, Bam battles with heroin and Aids

After the earthquake, Bam battles with heroin and Aids

Survivors seek solace in drugs and prostitution as
reconstruction work goes neglected

Robert Tait in Bam
Thursday May 11, 2006
The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1772068,00.html

It was once an oasis famous for its dates and ancient
Persian heritage. Now, amid a desolate landscape of
rubble and wrecked buildings, Bam is a byword for drug
abuse and an Aids problem that threatens to become an
epidemic.

The devastating earthquake that struck the city on
Boxing Day 2003 killed an estimated 40,000 people and
left thousands homeless, prompting a huge
international rescue effort. More than two years
later, relief has dwindled and rebuilding is going
slowly, aid officials say, hampered by an indolence
bred by alarming rates of addiction.

Depressed by multiple bereavement, many survivors
turned to opium, which is traditionally respectable
and widely available in a city on the drug transit
route from Afghanistan and Pakistan. More than half of
adult men and 15% of women have been classed as
addicts. Addiction has been reported among children as
young as 11. The trend has been compounded by the
influx of building workers, many of them long-time
users of heroin and other injected drugs. Their habits
have spread among the locals, leading to a dangerous
proliferation of needles. "Drug addiction is severely
impairing reconstruction," said a Unicef official,
speaking anonymously. "Drugs have taken a big toll on
people's motivation."
Despite the availability of state grants for
rebuilding homes, most people are housed in cramped
pre-fabs inside sprawling camps, which have been
condemned by aid workers as breeding grounds for
drugs, illicit sex and crime. The once-imposing
1,800-year-old citadel, a symbol of Persian power from
the pre-Islamic Sassanid dynasty, is little more than
a sad pile of rubble, although a reconstruction plan
exists.

Health officials are also alarmed by the threat of
HIV/Aids from a nascent sex industry, promoted by the
presence of outside workers separated from their
families and the dire financial straits of some
widowed women. So far, 20 Aids cases have been
recorded.

"We are trying to stop an epidemic. Bam has the
potential for the number of HIV/Aids cases to rise
dramatically," said Ali Reza Tajlili, the state-run
family planning association's representative in Bam.
"There is a very high demand for sex outside the
family framework, and it is taking place among people
with very little awareness about Aids," he said.

The scale of the problem is evident in Black House, a
rundown area where addicts meet each night to smoke or
inject heroin for 12p a shot. Muhammad Ali Barzegar,
29, a builder from Tehran, had been an addict for five
years and recently became hooked on tamjizak, a more
powerful substance.

Asked about the dangers of Aids, he said: "Those using
needles don't care if they are shared or dirty. They
just see a needle and want to get high. My life is
already destroyed. There have been times when I had
money to buy food for my family but bought drugs
instead. Anyone reaching this stage should only wish
for death."

Even if Aids is curbed, it will do little to alleviate
the impact of addiction, particularly among children.
Many with addicted parents are malnourished. Toys
distributed by relief agencies have been sold by
adults to feed their habit. Social workers have
reported carers trying to sell orphaned relatives.
Many youngsters no longer attend school.

"After the earthquake, opium was being handed out to
save the souls of survivors," said Amir Muhammad
Payam, an expert who wrote a Unicef-backed report on
Bam's crisis. "There's an expression in Bam saying,
'God provides the daily bread of the addict'."

But it has provided no salvation for Tahereh Tabar,
32, who lost two children and had another left with
brain damage by the earthquake. "I took opium when I
was still traumatised and it made me feel better," she
said, sitting with her son, Javad, 20, a fellow
addict, in the tiny metal cabin she now calls home.
"But now it has destroyed our lives."