Iran has lost 3,300 of its forces in anti-drug fight: official

  
 

 

  
 

 

  
     
           Tehran, Jan 5, IRNA -- Iran has lost 3,300 of its security forces in a relentless anti-drug fight which has also left huge financial losses since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the country's secretary of drug control headquarters, Ali Hashemi, said here Sunday.
         The campaign has further left 10,000 of Iran's security forces injured in the period under review, the official told during a meeting with the head of Kyrgyzstan's drug control commission.
         Iran straddles major international transit routes of drugs from Afghanistan and Pakistan, better known as the "golden crescent", for lucrative markets in Europe, Persian Gulf and Central Asia.
         The campaign has won plaudits from the international community, but the Islamic Republic has regularly complained that it needed more than conciliatory messages in the fight which Iran found itself
alone.
         "The problem of narcotics is a global dilemma and it needs international cooperation since profit-seeking individuals around the world are involved in illegal and deadly drug trafficking," Hashemi said.
         Drug trade throughout the world registered a 1,500 billion dollar turnover last year, the Iranian official said. 
         Iran has tried many methods to check the rage, but the country's borders with Afghanistan and Pakistan -- stretching to more than 900 kilometers mostly along deserts and mountainous regions -- have proved permeable.
         According to official figures, there are two million drug users as well as 1.2 million addicts in Iran. The country's drug catches amount to 200,000 tons each year but more than twice that much make it into the market.
         The campaign has gone dauntless either on far-flung mountains and deserts or inside cities against heavily-armed major drug traffickers and their petty accomplices who use highly complicated methods to
dodge police.
         Last Wednesday, Hashemi said that police had arrested more than 5,000 drug mules who were found to be ingesting narcotics in the last Iranian year which ended in March, 2002.
         The campaign has also cost Iran billions of dollars. According to officials, the Islamic Republic spends 800 million dollars each year to check the trade.
         Despite all the efforts, drug production in neighboring Afghanistan is expected to surge this year. According to unconfirmed reports, most of the regions under the US control in the war-devastated country are being gone under poppy cultivation.
 		  
 

  

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