Baghdad

Middle East: US Invasion, Continuing Insurgency Lead to Increasing Drug Use in Iraq

10/14/05
The United Nations news agency IRIN reported Tuesday that drug use in Iraq is rising steadily as war-weary Iraqis turn to hard drugs to take the edge off a bleak and terrifying existence. Security forces which would normally police the illegal drug trade are busy fending off a bloody insurgency now in its third year. A steady supply of opium and heroin from Afghanistan, site of another US military occupation, is contributing to the phenomenon, according to Iraqi officials.

According to the Ministry of Health, drug use is increasing among all age groups and both sexes, especially in Baghdad and the Shiite south. "There has a huge increase in the consumption of drugs since last year," Kamel Ali, director of the Ministry of Health's drug control program, told IRIN. "The numbers have doubled. In most cases the users are youths who have become addicted and are now working as drug dealers under pressure from the traffickers in order to keep themselves supplied," he said.

The number of registered drug addicts in Baghdad has more than doubled, from 3,000 to 7,000 since last year, said Ali. In the Shiite city of Kerbala, 160 miles to the south of Baghdad, the number has tripled. Addiction rates climb the closer you get to the Iranian border, officials said, noting that country's status as a key transshipment point for Afghan opium and heroin.

IRIN reported that many users say they have been traumatized by the US invasion and subsequent years of war and take drugs to ease the psychic pain of life in wartime. In Kerbala, IRIN talked to 22-year-old Khalid Hussein, a heroin user who finances his habit with drug sales. "In the beginning I found the idea strange, but today I feel comfortable doing it because at the same time I'm earning my own money, I'm also using the drug, and that helps me forget the terror that has descended on our lives since the foreigners took over our country," Hussein explained.

A Baghdad heroin seller, Abu Ali, told IRIN he did not fear arrest by the security forces. "They cannot do anything to us," he said. "Sometimes you even find members of the Iraqi army or the police looking for us to buy some of this great white powder which makes you fly to another planet," he added.

Some foreign troops are apparently getting in on the action, according to IRIN. The agency reported that dealers said they had a lucrative market among soldiers in the US-led occupation force. "They report strong demand from Italian troops in particular," IRIN noted.

Iraqi officials frankly acknowledge they have other priorities. "Unfortunately the intensification of the insurgency in Iraq and insecurity throughout the country has caused the government to neglect this important issue," said Saad Mehdi, a member of a newly-formed Interior Ministry anti-drug force.

"In the present circumstances we have to choose our priorities and the insurgency is killing more people than the drugs are," said Saruwad Haeezid, another Interior Ministry official.

Source:http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/407/drugsiniraq.shtml