ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Sulaimani security forces (Asayish) on Tuesday announced the confiscation of 44 textbooks coated with amphetamine. The anti-narcotics directorate of Sulaimani Asayish had obtained intelligence that the textbooks were entering Kurdistan from Penjwen, were then sent to Sulaimani, and that the drug trafficker planned to transport them to the United Kingdom. The textbooks were examined in the forensic laboratory where “results from the lab tests indicated that the books (textbooks) have been covered with (amphetamine) crystals,” Sulaimani’s Asayish announced. Kurdish security forces have arrested more than 1,000 people on drug-related charges in the Kurdistan Region in the first half of this year with more than half of them in Sulaimani province. Drug trafficking and use have been on the rise in the Kurdistan Region and Iraq since the fall of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003. 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. In October, Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Masrour Barzani 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. In addition to increased drug usage, the Kurdistan Region and Iraq, especially along their borders with Iran, Turkey, and Syria, are major transit routes for illicit drugs into Europe.
