“More than 1,000 people have been arrested on charges of drug trafficking and usage, 572 were in Sulaimani province,” Salam Abdulkhaliq, head of the Asayish media team, told Rudaw’s Soran Hussein.
Abdulkhaliq said that most of those arrested for using narcotics were between 18 and 30 years old, while the traffickers are of varying ages.
“There are very few females. For example, one woman has been arrested on drug charges in Sulaimani province,” he said, explaining that most of the suspects are males.
Drug trafficking and use has been on the rise in the Kurdistan Region and Iraq since the fall of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003.
In an interview with Rudaw in March, Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Labour and Social Affairs Minister Kwestan Muhamad warned against the spread of drugs in the Region, calling them a “great danger and more dangerous than terrorism.”
In May, the general director of the Kurdistan Region’s correctional facilities said that convictions on drug-related charges in the Region have significantly increased.
Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Masrour Barzani has said that the Region is “seriously and widely working to eradicate and combat” the threat of drugs, calling on Kurdish and international communities last October to cooperate with Erbil to eliminate what he described an “endemic” problem.
