The issue of drugs has become a serious challenge in Iraq, as drug trade and abuse have increased in recent years, especially in the southern and central regions of the country, bordering Iran, which has become a main route for drug smuggling and trade, especially crystal.
On Friday, the Iraqi security forces announced, in a statement, the seizure of 12 million “narcotic pills” in a “lightning” operation in Baghdad, which is one of the largest similar operations in recent times, and the arrest of six people in connection with the case, in a country where the drug problem has become a major challenge for the authorities.
According to a video statement transmitted on the social media of the Iraqi National Security Agency, the agency announced a “blitzkrieg operation” in Baghdad, through which its detachments were able to “overthrow one of the most important networks of trafficking in narcotic pills.”
The statement added, “As a result, a force from the agency moved and arrested the members of this network, one after the other, with flagrante delicto.”
“The operation ended with the arrest of six suspects and the seizure of a store of narcotic pills containing more than 12 million narcotic pills, equivalent to two and a half tons, in one of the areas east of the capital,” according to the statement.
The video attached to the statement showed the pills, which are of the “Benzoxol” type, the scientific name for a medical drug used to treat neurological diseases, but it may be misused for non-medical purposes, according to a report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime published in the year 2022, packed inside cardboard boxes, while they were seized and thrown away. The arrest of the accused.
The issue of drugs has become a serious challenge in Iraq, as drug trade and abuse have increased in recent years, especially in the southern and central regions of the country, bordering Iran, which has become a main route for drug smuggling and trade, especially crystal.
And in March, Iraq announced the seizure of more than three million pills of the narcotic Captagon on the border with Syria, a type of stimulating amphetamine whose smuggling has increased dramatically over the past years in the Middle East.
In June 2022, Iraqi security forces seized a glider that was carrying a million Captagon pills near the border with Kuwait. A few months earlier, the Iraqi authorities announced the confiscation of six million Captagon pills.
In late 2021, the Anti-Narcotics Unit at the Ministry of Interior announced that the governorates of Basra and Maysan in southern Iraq rank at the forefront of the country’s governorates in terms of drug trafficking and abuse.
