ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Sulaimani security forces have arrested seven people suspected of using or trading drugs in a 20 day period. “In the span of 20 days, a woman and six men were arrested in the zone of our directorate,” West Sulaimani Asayish directorate said in a statement on Sunday. The security force added that two of the arrested were suspected drug dealers and the other five were believed to be users. One of the arrested had 1.2 kilograms of crystal meth in his possession when he was arrested, according to the statement. “The people that are arrested have a woman among them who is of Arab ethnicity and was a drug user,” Rezhin Salih, head of the directorate’s communications, told Rudaw’s Brwa Kyani on Sunday. On Saturday, the Kurdistan Region’s anti-narcotics directorate announced the arrest of 10 people on drug possession charges in 24 hours. On March 10, Kurdish security forces arrested two people who were in possession of 12 kilograms of narcotics. The Kurdistan Region and Iraq have seen an increase in drug trafficking and use. Numbers have been in the rise since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, according to Brigadier Raad Ali Hussein, from the Iraqi Ministry of Interior’s narcotics directorate. “The numbers [of those abusing drugs] are getting dangerously high,” Hussein told Rudaw in December, noting that most users are between 18 to 28 years, but many are as young as 15. More than 6,000 people were arrested on suspicion of drug dealing or use across Iraq in the first 11 months of 2020, Mazin al-Quraishi, of the Ministry of Interior’s narcotics directorate, said in December. According to the ministry, the most common drug found in Iraq is crystal meth, which is smuggled through Iran from Afghanistan.
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