“Drugs are increasingly spreading in the Kurdistan Region. In the reformatories, out of 5,308 inmates, 1,214 were sentenced due to drugs - 676 for using drugs and 538 for dealing it,” Kwestan Muhamad, KRG’s Labour and Social Affairs Minister, told Rudaw’s Nwenar Fatih on Thursday.
“Drugs are a great danger and it is more dangerous than terrorism for the Kurdistan Region. The threat has reached a level where a nine-year-old child was addicted to drugs,” she noted.
The minister also said that they have seen an increase of drug usage and dealing among women.
“Drugs have surged among women, and currently 65 women have been sentenced for using or dealing with drugs. Tens of other women are being held as their investigations are ongoing,” Muhamad said.
In October, Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Masrour Barzani said that his government was working to eradicate the threat of drugs, and called on the Kurdish and international communities to cooperate with Erbil to eliminate the source of what he described as an “endemic” issue.
“The Kurdistan Regional Government [KRG] is seriously and widely working to eradicate and combat this dangerous threat, as well as mobilizing all its efforts to prevent its spread,” Barzani said at a conference for combating drugs and psychotropic substances in Erbil.
He blamed armed groups who filled the security gap in the disputed areas between Iraq and the Kurdistan Region as well as at the borders with neighboring countries for interfering with Kurdish security forces’ effort to combat drug trafficking.
The Region lacks sufficient rehabilitation centers for drug addicts, as well as resources to raise awareness about the repercussions of drug use. Most users end up in jail.
The social affairs minister said they have opened exclusive centers within correctional facilities for drug users, but that they lack specialized doctors and medication.
There has been an alarming rise in drug dealing and use across Iraq in recent years, despite measures taken by the federal government to curb the phenomenon.
Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani has ordered the establishment of rehabilitation centers in all Iraqi provinces, excluding the Kurdistan Region, as part of his cabinet’s commitment to combat growing drug trade and use as seriously as the country fights terrorism.
Iraqi security forces arrested more than 1,400 people on drug-related charges during the month of February, “including international dealers,” the interior ministry stated last week.
Drugs have also pervaded the Kurdistan Region’s prison system. Contraband substances are smuggled in and some inmates have started using drugs after going to jail, according to Muhamad. “A person was arrested for violating traffic rules but ended up being addicted to drugs at a reformatory,” she said.
General conditions in the prisons are also poor. Muhamad warned that correctional facilities are overcrowded. She said she had informed the Council of Ministers about the “bad condition” in the centres, explaining that she once got infected with scabies after visiting a women's facility in Erbil.
She has called for the release of some prisoners through a general amnesty in order to ease the overcrowding, an issue that has drawn international criticism.
In its 2022 report on human rights practices in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region, the United States criticized overcrowding in the Region’s detention centers, saying the number of detainees had exceeded capacity by 157 percent during that year.
The report also criticized the sanitation, hygiene, lack of adequate water, lack of adequate medical services, outdated infrastructure, and violence during preliminary detention.
