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ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The director of the anti-drug office in Dhi Qar’s Shatra district was wounded in a shootout with two suspected drug traffickers during an operation to arrest them, Iraq’s Interior Ministry said Saturday.
“While executing the arrest warrant, the two suspects, in a last ditch attempt, opened fire on the executing force to deter the heroes. This necessitated returning fire in accordance with the rules of engagement,” the ministry said in a statement published on Facebook.
The officer, a colonel, sustained gunshot wounds to his abdomen and leg. He was hospitalized and remained in stable condition after undergoing successful surgery, the ministry added.
The ministry said the two suspects were also wounded in the shootout. Authorities seized a Kalashnikov rifle, ammunition magazines, five hand grenades and one kilogram of crystal methamphetamine, it said.
The two suspects were taken into custody and legal measures were initiated against them, according to the ministry.
Iraq has stepped up its campaign against drug trafficking in recent years as the country has increasingly become both a destination and transit route for narcotics.
A July 2024 report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) identified Iraq as a “conduit” in a drug-trafficking network linking Southwest Asia, the Arabian Peninsula and Europe. The report also documented a sharp rise in Captagon trafficking in Iraq, with seizures increasing by almost 3,380 percent between 2019 and 2023. Iraq seized more than 4.1 tons of Captagon tablets in 2023 alone.
Iraq's General Directorate for Narcotics and Psychotropic Substances Affairs said in late August that it had secured 4,644 convictions in drug-related cases since the beginning of 2026, including 69 death sentences and 267 life terms. Authorities also said they had dismantled 304 domestic and 54 international trafficking networks, carried out 21 operations abroad, established six contact points and issued 43 international arrest warrants.
The directorate also reported 32 armed clashes with drug traffickers this year, resulting in the death of one of its members and injuries to 31 others. Three traffickers were killed and 23 were wounded in the confrontations, according to the figures.
Operations led by the anti-narcotics directorate have also expanded international coordination, with 36 liaison channels established with foreign counterparts to strengthen intelligence sharing and field cooperation, according to figures previously released by the Interior Ministry.
Iraq has also been an important trafficking route for heroin and methamphetamine from Afghanistan and methamphetamine from Iran, primarily toward Türkiye, according to Alexander Soderholm, a policy adviser at the European Union Drugs Agency (EUDA), who spoke to Rudaw on Saturday.
“It is currently difficult to confirm whether production inside Iraq is increasing, though health-related data points to a worrying increase in the domestic use of illicit drugs within Iraq, including Captagon, methamphetamine, and tramadol,” Soderholm told Rudaw.
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