War-torn Iraq is emerging as a key conduit in the global drugs trade, as criminal gangs exploit its porous border with Iran to channel their illicit goods to the Middle East, Africa and Europe.
The Iraqi authorities say that since the 2003 US-led invasion the trade in illegal opiates, cannabis and synthetic pharmaceuticals has risen steadily, and that many drugs originating in Afghanistan enter Iraq via Iran.
Statistics are hard to come by in devastated Iraq, but the Baghdad government says a rising number of traffickers are being caught at border crossings with Iran, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
“A large numbers of smugglers are being arrested,” interior ministry spokesman Major General Abdul Karim Khalaf said, adding that many were being detained in the provinces of Basra and Maysan.
Maysan’s capital Amara, a stone’s throw from the Iranian border, is suspected by the authorities of being a growing drug-trafficking hub for the Gulf states and north toward the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.
About 65km south of Amara, the long reeds of the al-Ezeir marshes that extend well inside Iran make ideal cover for smugglers, who are thought to transport thousands of kilos of opiates a year in the area.
Farther south in Basra, also bordering Iran, the drug trade is flourishing there, too, police said.
“The smugglers transfer hashish and opium across at al-Shalamja at the Iranian border and Safwan near the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border,” an anti-narcotics agent in Basra said on condition of anonymity.
“Some of them are arrested from time to time, including Iranians and even Syrians,” he said.
Meanwhile, Samawa city in Muthanna province has become the main crossing point for smugglers headed to Saudi Arabia, said a local police officer, who asked that his name not be used.
The UN Office on Drugs and Crime said that Afghanistan’s opium production soared to 8,200 tonnes last year from 6,100 tonnes the year before, accounting for 93 percent of global production.
Iran’s police chief Esmaeel Ahmadi Moghadam said last month in Tehran that only about 900 tonnes of the 2,500 tonnes of drugs that entered his country from Afghanistan were seized last year.
Iraqi police refused to provide estimates of how many tonnes of drugs passed through the country last year, but Tehran authorities say well over 1,000 tonnes are going overseas, most of it thought to be exiting along Iran’s western border.
A growing slice of that trade is believed to be passing through Iraq, said the International Narcotics Control Board, the independent and quasi-judicial monitoring body associated with the UN.
“Illicit drug trafficking and the risk of illicit cultivation of opium poppy have been increasing in some areas with grave security problems,” it said, referring to Iraq in a report published last year.
An Iraqi police captain in Amara said that drug trafficking arrests in the city, long a home to anti-government militias, had jumped from 26 in 2005 to 46 last year.
A state of general instability in Iraq has only made it easier for drugs traffickers, and a lack of infrastructure has made collecting data especially difficult.
“Drugs follow the paths of least resistance, and parts of Iraq certainly fit that description,” an official of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime said. “There is a shortage of reliable information about the drug situation in Iraq.”
VAGUE: The criteria of the amnesty remain unclear, but it would cover political violence from 1999 to today, and those convicted of murder or drug trafficking would not qualify Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodriguez on Friday announced an amnesty bill that could lead to the release of hundreds of prisoners, including opposition leaders, journalists and human rights activists detained for political reasons. The measure had long been sought by the US-backed opposition. It is the latest concession Rodriguez has made since taking the reins of the country on Jan. 3 after the brazen seizure of then-Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro. Rodriguez told a gathering of justices, magistrates, ministers, military brass and other government leaders that the ruling party-controlled Venezuelan National Assembly would take up the bill with urgency. Rodriguez also announced the shutdown
Civil society leaders and members of a left-wing coalition yesterday filed impeachment complaints against Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte, restarting a process sidelined by the Supreme Court last year. Both cases accuse Duterte of misusing public funds during her term as education secretary, while one revives allegations that she threatened to assassinate former ally Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The filings come on the same day that a committee in the House of Representatives was to begin hearings into impeachment complaints against Marcos, accused of corruption tied to a spiraling scandal over bogus flood control projects. Under the constitution, an impeachment by the
Exiled Tibetans began a unique global election yesterday for a government representing a homeland many have never seen, as part of a democratic exercise voters say carries great weight. From red-robed Buddhist monks in the snowy Himalayas, to political exiles in megacities across South Asia, to refugees in Australia, Europe and North America, voting takes place in 27 countries — but not China. “Elections ... show that the struggle for Tibet’s freedom and independence continues from generation to generation,” said candidate Gyaltsen Chokye, 33, who is based in the Indian hill-town of Dharamsala, headquarters of the government-in-exile, the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA). It
A Virginia man having an affair with the family’s Brazilian au pair on Monday was found guilty of murdering his wife and another man that prosecutors say was lured to the house as a fall guy. Brendan Banfield, a former Internal Revenue Service law enforcement officer, told police he came across Joseph Ryan attacking his wife, Christine Banfield, with a knife on the morning of Feb. 24, 2023. He shot Ryan and then Juliana Magalhaes, the au pair, shot him, too, but officials argued in court that the story was too good to be true, telling jurors that Brendan Banfield set
RSS