Iraq has seen major increase in drug trafficking, use in post-Saddam era: official

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Iraq has recorded major drug abuse and trafficking increases since 2003, according to an official.

“Drug trafficking has significantly increased” since civil unrest was unleashed following the American invasion in 2003, Brigadier Raad Ali Hussein, the development director of Iraq’s anti-narcotics department in the Ministry of Interior, told Rudaw’s Rebwar Ali in a radio interview on Sunday. 

The official, however, refused to give exact figures for the number of those arrested and the amount of narcotics seized.

Iraq was mainly a transit country for drug dealers, whose consumer market was elsewhere, until recently. However, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, a wide range of illicit drugs have become widely available in Iraq over the last eight years, reports the New York Times. 

“The numbers [of those abusing drugs] are getting dangerously high,” Hussein told Rudaw, noting that most users are between 18 to 28 years, but many are as young as 15.

Drugs “are transported to the east, west and north of Iraq from the south,” added Hussein, noting this includes to the Kurdistan Region.

The provinces of Basra and Maysan have recorded the highest number of drug trafficking, Hussein says, followed by Anbar, Najaf and Baghdad.

In 2019, there were 651 drug-related arrests in the Kurdistan Region between January and June. 

According to 2018 data by the KRG, there were 10,000 "drug users" in the Kurdistan Region.  

The rise of the Islamic State (ISIS) group in Iraq paved the way for drug traffickers to further their business, claimed Hussein, noting that security forces were preoccupied with fighting the militants rather than drug trafficking.

Numbers have gone up in the last 10 months since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic compared to the same period in 2019.

The official claims that around 75 to 80 percent of drug trade is smuggled through the ports of southern Iraq, as well as borders with Kuwait and Iran. The Iranian border in particular is vulnerable to drug trafficking “by Iranian citizens who enter the country for tourism and other purposes,” said Hussein.

A law adopted in 2017 on Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances punishes those found guilty with imprisonment between one to three years, as well as financial fines, for “anyone who imports, produces or possesses narcotic drugs,” legal expert Tarek Harb told Al-Monitor in November. “Article 288 of the same law stipulates a life imprisonment sentence for every person who sets up a place for drug abuse,” he added.

Correction: the article has been amended to correct Hussein's position in the anti-narcotics department 

Updated January 6, 2020