ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Kurdish security forces in Sulaimani (Asayish) revealed their yearly figures for 2024 and said they have arrested over 600 terrorism suspects and seized over three tons of narcotics.
“One of the main duties of Kurdistan Region’s Asayish is counter-terrorism. This year 257 operations were conducted for arresting terrorists,” Salam Abdulkhaliq, head of the Sulaimani Asayish media team, said in a presser. The operations resulted in the arrest of 636 terrorism suspects.
There were 126 joint operations between Asayish and the Iraqi forces, Abdulkhaliq noted.
Kurdish security forces intensified their anti-terror operations almost a decade ago when the Islamic State (ISIS) seized control of swathes of Syrian and Iraqi territory in 2014. To combat the group, Iraq requested assistance from the US and international allies, three years after Washington withdrew its troops from the country.
The US-led global coalition provided both the Iraqi army and the Kurdish Peshmerga with air and ground support, as well as training and equipment, as they fought to retake the country from the extremists, ultimately declaring the territorial defeat of ISIS in 2017.
Iraqi officials have said that the threat from the terror group is now contained, though it continues to carry out regular operations against suspected ISIS militants.
“Regarding the threat of narcotics which is not less than the threat of terrorism,” Abdulkhaliq noted that 1,019 suspects were arrested for using and selling illicit substances, and over three tons of drugs - approximately half of all Iraq’s drug confiscations in 2024 - were seized.
On Saturday, Iraq’s counter-narcotics directorate announced that security forces seized over six tons of drugs and arrested more than 14,000 suspects on drug-related charges in 2024.
Drug trafficking and use have risen in the Kurdistan Region and Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. The Kurdistan Region has increased efforts in combating narcotics.
In October 2023, Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Masrour Barzani said that the region is intensifying its efforts to combat the threat of drugs, calling on Kurdish and international communities to cooperate with Erbil to eliminate what he described as an “endemic” problem.
The Kurdistan Region and Iraq, especially along their borders with Iran, Turkey, and Syria, are also major transit routes for illicit drugs into Europe.
