Kurdistan
Image of the drugs, hidden inside a water boiler, confiscated by the Sulaimani Asayish on April 22, 2024. Photo: Screengrab/Sulaimani Asayish
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Sulaimani Security forces (Asayish) on Monday announced the arrest of five people on drug dealing charges following the confiscation of 15 kilograms of narcotic hashish in their possession.
“The anti-narcotics directorate, in coordination with the city’s internal security, successfully seized over 15 kilograms of narcotic hashish and arrested five dealers attempting to smuggle these substances out of the Kurdistan Region,” read a statement from the Sulaimani Asayish on their Facebook page.
Colonel Salam Abdulkhaliq, the media director of the Sulaimani Asayish said during a press conference that the suspects hid the drugs inside a water boiler, adding that the substances were smuggled inside the Kurdistan Region from a neighboring country, without specifying the country.
Abdulkhaliq said that the Asayish forces “carefully monitored” the transportation of the drugs to Sulaimani, where it was seized.
Drug trafficking and use have been on the rise in the Kurdistan Region and Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.
In an interview with Rudaw last month, Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Labour and Social Affairs Minister Kwestan Muhamad warned against the spread of drugs in the Region.
“Drugs are a great danger and it is more dangerous than terrorism for the Kurdistan Region. The threat has reached a level where a nine-year-old child was addicted to drugs,” she noted.
The minister also stressed that authorities have recorded an increase in drug usage and dealing among women particularly, without specifying within which period the data was recorded.
Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Masrour Barzani, during a conference on combating the drug trade in October, said that the Region is “seriously and widely working to eradicate and combat” the threat of drugs, and called on the Kurdish and international community to cooperate with Erbil to eliminate the source of what he described an “endemic” problem.
“The Kurdistan Regional Government [KRG] is seriously and widely working to eradicate and combat this dangerous threat, as well as mobilizing all its efforts to prevent its spread,” Barzani said.
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