Skyrocketing methamphetamine use poses new security threat in Iraq

Judy Woodruff:

The Middle East has long been plagued by geopolitical conflicts, but now a crisis of a different sort is taking hold.

The narcotics trade poses security threats and risks for ever-changing societies whose conservative norms had usage in check.

We explore the drivers behind the regional drug trade and why efforts to combat it have largely failed.

Special correspondent Simona Foltyn brings us the first of two reports from the region, tonight from Basra in Southern Iraq.

Simona Foltyn:

As night falls over the southern port city of Basra, the anti-narcotics unit is dispatched for a mission in the battle against the booming drug trade.

After years of conflict with ISIS, Iraq's security forces are now fighting an undeclared war against a new enemy, crystal meth. The anti-drug unit just received information from a source about a dealer who is selling crystal meth out of his home, and they're on their way now to try to arrest him.

These operations happen nightly, and they are dangerous. In Basra alone, seven police have been killed over the past year during raids like these. Luckily, the men face no resistance tonight as they detain the suspect.

Brigadier General Ismail Ghanem Abdalla is in charge of the unit.

Brig. Gen. Ismail Ghanem Abdalla, Iraqi Police (through translator):

Show us where it is, and we will help you. We're coming for the crystal meth you keep in this house. We know someone who is buying from you.

Simona Foltyn:

Next door, investigators find what they're looking for. The young man and his father are taken away for questioning. But they are just small fish in a city that is flooded with crystal meth.

Nestled on the Persian Gulf between Iran and Kuwait, Basra's strategic location has turned it into a hub for the regional drug trade. Crystal meth from Iran and Afghanistan is smuggled through Basra and onwards to the Gulf and the Mediterranean.

But much of the drug is finding a market here, a country of 40 million plagued by rampant youth unemployment. The anti-narcotics unit sets up checkpoints every night to stop distribution inside the city. But apart from causing traffic jams and alienating residents, it does little to stop dealers.

Brig. Gen. Ismail Ghanem Abdalla (through translator):

We don't have the technology. We rely on human intelligence and our own resources.

That's why its sometimes difficult to, for example, locate a suspect while he's on a call. It takes a lot of time. The criminals are becoming sophisticated and we need to keep up.

Simona Foltyn:

The trade is facilitated by tribal networks protected by powerful armed groups and enabled by corrupt officials. A 2017 anti-narcotics law introduced rewards for informants and officers to increase interdictions and curb corruption.

Five years on, this unit hasn't received any funding.

Brig. Gen. Ismail Ghanem Abdalla (through translator):

If we had the resources, the number of informants would go up and corruption would go down. Instead, we depend on our relationships with sources. We appeal to their patriotism and our relations with them. And that's not enough.

Simona Foltyn:

In a worrying development, the traders are turning into producers. According to a 2020 U.N. report and two insiders the "NewsHour" spoke to, there are now crystal meth laboratories inside Iraq, something the government still officially denies.

Brig. Gen. Ismail Ghanem Abdalla (through translator):

There's no production or cultivation inside Iraq. Iraq is importing 100 percent.

Simona Foltyn:

And there's another problem. Iraq's prisons have become a breeding ground for drug dealers. General Ismail shows us the holding cells in a Basra police station, so crowded that not all prisoners can sit down at the same time.

Brig. Gen. Ismail Ghanem Abdalla (through translator):

If a drug user goes in there, it's like he's enrolling in school, and he will graduate as a dealer. Unfortunately, this is the current capacity of the state.

Simona Foltyn:

In the first six months of 2022, the government arrested a staggering 8,000 people on drug-related charges across Iraq. Police prisons like these are intended only for pretrial detention.

Brig. Gen. Ismail Ghanem Abdalla (through translator):

Half of these prisoners have already been convicted. They're supposed to be transferred to prisons run by the Ministry of Justice.

Simona Foltyn:

But those main prisons are also full. There are more than 700 drug users and dealers crammed inside these prison cells, more than four times their intended capacity. It's a telling indicator of just how severely the drug epidemic is afflicting Iraqi society, and authorities are simply struggling to cope.

We're allowed to interview some prisoners, a rare opportunity for these men to leave the crammed prison cell and sit on a chair, rather than the floor.

Prisoner (through translator):

Two people share the same spot on the floor. And, every six hours, they swap. It's very depressing. It's a miserable situation.

Even if you want to reform yourself, you can't in this place. All the thinking and talk inside revolves around drugs.

Simona Foltyn:

This man is serving a six-year sentence for selling crystal meth. But it was his first stint in prison that turned him into a drug dealer.

Prisoner (through translator):

Before I went to prison the first time, I knew 10 people who did drugs. In prison, I was introduced to 200. After I was released, we reconnected.

The government does not provide any work opportunities, so I was obliged to start dealing.

Simona Foltyn:

Under Iraqi law, drug users get one to three years in prison, except for those who voluntarily seek treatment, if they can get a spot at Basra's only rehabilitation center. Its 44 beds are not enough to serve a city home to four million.

Dr. Aqeel Sabah, Psychiatrist (through translator):

We are lacking the appropriate staff and the necessary infrastructure. And buildings are also not available. We are just in the beginning of the journey. Even the title psychotherapist doesn't officially exist in Iraqi government institutions.

Simona Foltyn:

Dr. Aqeel Sabah is a psychiatrist leading group therapy sessions here, a new concept in a country where mental health is widely misunderstood and drug addiction is taboo.

Dr. Aqeel Sabah (through translator):

People do not admit that they are taking drugs. This is one reason which prevents them from coming to the hospital.

Simona Foltyn:

It took this patient, whom we will call Ali, seven years before he sought help for his addiction.

Ali, Patient (through translator):

I did everything just to get the drugs. Something was pushing me to get the drugs. I would do anything, even if it meant stealing. I lost a lot. I lost my family. I lost my car. I lost money. I lost everything.

Simona Foltyn:

Ali doesn't want to leave the facility, fearing he will relapse when he returns to the same environment. I ask him what percent of his friends smoke crystal meth.

"All of them," he replies.

Ali blames Iraq's ruling elites for backing the drug trade to line their pockets and to numb the young, restive population into complacency.

Ali (through translator):

Nobody thinks about the government. Nobody is thinking, where is the oil, where is Iraq, where we were and where we are headed to. Impossible. We are busy taking crystal and pills. Otherwise, we might think, why don't I have a job? Why is Iraq not like other countries?

Simona Foltyn:

The drug epidemic risks consuming Iraq's young generation.

In a country crippled by political crises, unemployment and rampant corruption, crystal meth offers the only escape.

For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Simona Foltyn in Basra, Southern Iraq.