Opium:
Iraq's Deadly New Export
By Patrick Cockburn
in Baghdad
23 May, 2007
The
Independent
Farmers
in southern Iraq have started to grow opium poppies in their fields
for the first time, sparking fears that Iraq might become a serious
drugs producer along the lines of Afghanistan.
Rice farmers along the Euphrates,
to the west of the city of Diwaniya, south of Baghdad, have stopped
cultivating rice, for which the area is famous, and are instead planting
poppies, Iraqi sources familiar with the area have told The Independent.
The shift to opium cultivation
is still in its early stages but there is little the Iraqi government
can do about it because rival Shia militias and their surrogates in
the security forces control Diwaniya and its neighbourhood. There have
been bloody clashes between militiamen, police, Iraqi army and US forces
in the city over the past two months.
The shift to opium production
is taking place in the well-irrigated land west and south of Diwaniya
around the towns of Ash Shamiyah, al Ghammas and Ash Shinafiyah. The
farmers are said to be having problems in growing the poppies because
of the intense heat and high humidity. It is too dangerous for foreign
journalists to visit Diwaniya but the start of opium poppy cultivation
is attested by two students from there and a source in Basra familiar
with the Iraqi drugs trade.
Drug smugglers have for long
used Iraq as a transit point for heroin, produced from opium in laboratories
in Afghanistan, being sent through Iran to rich markets in Saudi Arabia
and the Gulf. Saddam Hussein's security apparatus in Basra was reportedly
heavily involved in the illicit trade. Opium poppies have hitherto not
been grown in Iraq and the fact that they are being planted is a measure
of the violence in southern Iraq. It is unlikely that the farmers' decision
was spontaneous and the gangs financing them are said to be "well-equipped
with good vehicles and weapons and are well-organised".
There is no inherent reason
why the opium poppy should not be grown in the hot and well-watered
land in southern Iraq. It was cultivated in the area as early as 3,400BC
and was known to the ancient Sumerians as Hul Gil, the "joy plant".
Some of the earliest written references to the opium poppy come from
clay tablets found in the ruins of the city of Nippur, just to the east
of Diwaniya.
There has been an upsurge
in violence not only in Diwaniya but in Basra, Nassariyah, Kut and other
Shia cities of southern Iraq over the past 10 days. It receives limited
attention outside Iraq because it has nothing to do with the fighting
between the Sunni insurgents and US forces further north or the civil
war between Shia and Sunni in Baghdad and central Iraq. The violence
is also taking place in provinces that are too dangerous for journalists
to visit. Aside from Basra, few foreign soldiers are killed.
The fighting is between rival
Shia parties and militias, notably the Mehdi Army, who support the anti-US
cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, and the Badr Organisation - the military wing
of the recently renamed Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC). In many,
though not all, areas of southern Iraq, the latter group controls the
police.
The intra-militia violence
in southern Iraq is essentially over control of profitable resources
and the establishment of power bases. According to one report the violence
in Diwaniya has been escalating for two months and was initially motivated
by rivalry over control of opium production but soon widened into a
general turf war.
The immediate cause of the
fighting in Diwaniya that began on 16 May was the arrest of several
members of the Mehdi Army. Other militiamen tried to rescue them and
attacked the police (whom the Sadrists say are controlled by the SIIC).
Troops from the Iraqi army and the US army were drawn into the fighting.
The Sadrists sent 200 men as reinforcements into the city. Some 11 people,
eight of them civilians, were killed on a single day. An American soldier
was killed and two wounded in a Mehdi Army attack on Saturday. Diwaniya's
Governor, Khaleel Jaleel Hamza, who has moved his family to Iran for
safety, announced "a pact of honour" to end the fighting on
Monday. The agreement provides for foreign forces to be kept out of
the city.
As in Afghanistan after the
fall of the Taliban in 2001, these conditions of primal anarchy are
ideal for criminal gangs and drug smugglers and producers. The difference
is that Afghanistan had long been a major producer of opium and possessed
numerous laboratories experienced in turning opium into heroin. The
Taliban, on the orders of its leader, Mullah Omar, had stopped its cultivation
by farmers in the parts of Afghanistan it controlled. Farmers near the
southern city of Kandahar grubbed up cauliflowers and planted poppies
instead as soon as the US started bombing.
The grip of the British Army
around Basra and other southern provinces was always tenuous and is
now coming to an end. Although the government in Baghdad speaks of gradually
taking control of security in the provinces from US and Britain, the
winners in the new Iraq are the militia, often criminalised, that have
colonised the Iraqi security forces. Diwaniya is in Qaddasiyah province,
which was never under British control but the pattern in all parts of
Shia Iraq is very similar.
The one factor currently
militating against criminal gangs organising poppy cultivation in Iraq
on a wide scale is that they are already making large profits from smuggling
drugs from Iran. This is easy to do because of Iraq's enormous and largely
unguarded land borders with neighbouring states. Iraqis themselves are
not significant consumers of heroin or other drugs.
But it is evident from the
start of opium production around Diwaniya that some gangs think there
is money to be made by following the example of Afghanistan. Given that
they can guarantee much higher profits from growing opium poppies than
can be made from rice, many impoverished Iraqi farmers are likely to
cultivate the new crop.
© 2007 Independent News
and Media Limited
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