“The situation in the country was rough. You are going to look for work, but there was no job,” he says. “Once, twice and I was addicted (to crystal meth). I was trapped. I could not get out.”
The woman who he said was the love of his life left him.
During this report, Iraq’s drug users were identified by pseudonyms to protect their privacy.
“We do not have the capacity,” said Col. Mohammed Alwan, the commander of the drug unit in this part of the capital. “Sometimes we have to delay work because we do not have the capacity to detain prisoners and inmates, especially not with the pandemic.”
He estimates that 10% of the population in his area of operation is addicted to drugs, overwhelmingly to crystal meth.
Several officials told CNN that the Covid-19 pandemic had exacerbated drug trafficking in Iraq.
Years of war severely disrupted the Iraqi state, with various powerful armed forces outside government control. Corruption is booming, and for most Iraqis the economy is on a seemingly endless downward cycle.
Iraqi youth are struggling to find work, regardless of their levels of education. In 2020, the pandemic dealt a blow to an already fragile economy. According to a report by the World Bank in the autumn of 2020, millions of Iraqis are expected to fall into poverty due to the twin shocks of the Covid-19 and a global collapse in the oil price that is fueling the Iraqi economy.
Legions of disillusioned youth trying to escape harsh realities began to swell, and the drug trade flourished.
“Drug dealers have their ways, they usually give drugs to poor, unemployed people for free to lure them until they become addicted,” General Amad Hussein explained to anti-drug police while handing out leaflets with a hotline number in an impoverished Baghdad handing out. environment.
“That person then starts stealing money to pay for it, or they even turn this person into a distributor.”
Under the rule of former president and dictator Saddam Hussein, the maximum penalty for drug use was death. That draconian legislation drove the trade deep underground and kept the streets largely clean.
In addition to the unleashing of chaos in Iraq, the US invasion in 2003 that ousted the country’s cruel former ruler also weakened its borders and strengthened the drug trade.
Officials here say trade reached a peak in 2014 with the advent of ISIS and Captagon, an amphetamine popular among the group’s fighters, who came to Iraq from Syria.
But a US-led coalition campaign against ISIS has led to heightened security along the Iraqi-Syrian border. Trade then shifts to Iraq’s predominantly Shia south and its porous border with Iran.
The vast majority of crystal meth, which accounts for about 60% of Iraq’s drug trade, flows from the border area, senior anti-drug officials told CNN.
“Neighboring countries are using it to destroy Iraqi society, the Iraqi economy,” Col. claims. Alwan. “We have established several channels with the Iranian side to deal with this issue, but we have not reached an agreement to address it.”
The Iranian foreign ministry did not respond to CNN’s request for comment on cross-border smuggling operations.
The anti-drug unit, understaffed and underfunded, has yet to catch any major retailers across the country, despite nationwide raids. Officials say the beneficiaries of the trade range from Sunni extremist groups and Iraq-backed Shi militias to criminal gangs.
Thuraya was arrested along with her husband in a house where she was working. They were in possession of 300 grams of crystal meth, with a street value of about $ 18,000. Someone who also mentions Thuraya as her ‘girlfriend’ is an intermediary who regularly ran to the Iranian border to pick up the drug at a supplier.
She is sitting in a women’s prison in Baghdad and says she has only a vague idea of the shady supply chain at the border. They receive the crystal met ‘from the big traders’, she goes on to add that she has no information about their names and backgrounds.
Thuraya would help smuggle it through checkpoints in the cities where the trio operates, deliver it to other dealers or sell it themselves.
The prison in which we meet her is specifically for women involved in drugs or prostitution. She says her husband introduced her to crystal meth before they got married, when he saw that she had fallen into a depression. At the time, her previous marriage had just failed and she was forcibly estranged from her children.
“As a woman, it’s easy to go through checkpoints. We are not searched. I will hide it all over my body,” Thuraya said, pointing to her chest, hips and legs under her long black abaya.
Over the years, various insurgent groups and militias have used women to smuggle explosives and weapons to evade the radar of security forces. According to security officials, drug networks have increased their recruitment of women to facilitate trade.
“It is easier for women to work in the drug trade than for men; they can work under cover, they do not pay much attention to themselves,” says Col. Alwan and pulls out his phone to show us pictures of two women. his unit captured a few days earlier. They stand behind a small table with crystal metals, pipes and the rest of the stock with which they were found.
“We do not have a female force that can search women,” he adds, pointing to one of the photos. “This one told us she was going to a rental company with a man and told him that if you want to have sex with me, you should buy drugs or take drugs.”
Trapped in a web of addiction, users struggle to find a way out. A recent legal reform has lifted the penalties for users seeking help, but according to security officials, many are unaware of it.
Without coming forward, traders caught are sentenced to up to 15 years in prison. Users – regardless of the drug – serve years of imprisonment.
Enass Kareem, a small, dark-haired woman, flips through her phone and reads messages from an Iraqi drug awareness Facebook page.
“I beg you; I want to be treated. I’m fifteen years old from Basra, please treat me like your brother.”
About a year ago, Enass, a middle school biology teacher, noticed that some of her students were using it.
“They skipped classes and when they attended, they were not focused,” she explains. “I realized other signs like in their teeth, in their aggressive reactions.”
She was reluctant to notify the school administration about the suspected users, for fear that they would be suspended. Instead, she quietly reached out to their parents and got them into rehab.
“I started a Facebook page to raise awareness about drugs and the options for addicts.” She explains.
People started sending messages to her and asking for help for themselves, for their loved ones and for their friends.
“Through my contact with users, I realized that one of the biggest reasons is idle time. Most users do not have jobs. Even those with university degrees cannot get jobs,” she says.
She compares drugs to a form of terrorism, one that can easily escape investigation if it quietly enters homes, schools and universities.
“It’s destroying a society through drugs. It’s destroying people psychologically, crime is increasing, families are being torn apart,” she says. “In the future, the impact of this is going to be severe.”
She works closely with the Department of Medicine, which also prefers that addicts recover as behind bars.
The rehabilitation block of the mental health center in Baghdad, Ibn Rushd, is full; doctors and nurses need to get patients out faster than they want to.
Abdulkarim’s eyes are bright, his teeth and his jaw are sore, he says; his brain feels like it could explode. He sits on one of the intoxicated beds and sways back and forth slightly.
“I’m going through it,” he promises the nurse will examine him. He was only here three days; the crystal met cravings running through his body seem overwhelming.
Abdulkarim was a day laborer. He walked the streets with the other unemployed, angry and dejected.
“They caught me in this. To forget, to escape,” he recalls. “Unemployment has driven us into this. And the situation in Iraq, the miserable situation.”
The country is at war, anti-drug officials say, a war they fear they will lose.
“The era of traditional warfare with two armies facing each other is over,” General Hussein said. “The enemies of this country are going to do everything in their power to prevent us from developing and that is a form of warfare. They want to destroy the core of our society, our youth.”
Aqeel Najm contributed to this report from Baghdad.