Opium: Iraq's deadly new export

[enquirewithin]

Amid the anarchy, farmers begin to grow opium poppies, raising fears that the country could become a major heroin supplier
By Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad

Independent, 23 May 2007


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.

[wellhelm]

Swim was in both Ad Diwaniya and An Nassariyah. And finds it funny as they say there is "well watered" land in sothern Iraq. Swim saw only sand beyond the Euphrates. Miles and miles of sand. Swim still has sand is his ass crack!

[enquirewithin]

Interesting pace to go SWIWhelm. When did you go there?

[wellhelm]

In the begining of this nasty disgusting messy poor excuse for a piece of shit unjust war(not to insult a piece of shit).

[Alfa]

Well Bush was already very succesfull at creating the largest opium production in the world*, so it's not surprising that Iraq is starting up production as well.

*Opium production Afghanistan in Metric Tons (MT) before and after the US invasion:

2001 - 185
2002 - 3.400
2003 - 3.600
2004 - 4.200
2005 - 4.100
2006 - 6.100

Source: UNODC

[Alicia]

What a blissful time this, lets go to war.. the bridge trolls are on top of the world... The war on drugs will get very more so interesting soon.

apparently.. ahem.

[allyourbase]

as usual, our government props up a puppet state so it can begin producing the three O's....Oil, Opium, and Oligarchy.

[Ethyl]

Swie offers himself to try the "new" poppies

[OccularFantasm]

It is quite sad that a few heroine addicts and a corrupt global culture war put a bad name on the opium poppy. Itd make more sense to jus ban heroine if thats the concern, not opium. This would make about as much sense as banning cocacola classic becuase of other derrivitives form the cocoa leaf, or saying hemp seeds are dangerous.

[allyourbase]

that really has nothing to do with it....they may say that addiction prevention, harm reduction, et cetera is the reason for the aggression against the poppy plant, but its really just a way to keep the prices for heroin and opium high. the people who made it illegal are the exact same people whos familys have been running the opium trade for generations. there have been wars fought as recently as last century (....to the shores of TRIPOLI) by western nations trying to force their product on other societies. and thats not even counting the current ongoing wars to turn iraq and afghanistan into opium producing countries.

[Ethyl]

In Swie's country heroin prices drop by almost half every 6/7 years since 30 years ago.
Heroin is (still) big time business.

[Benga]

war means good drug business.
in lebanon the bekaa valley farmers switched from traditional hashish farming to semi-industrial crops during the last 15 years of civil war, and developped a good and steady hand in opium poppy growing.
this fed the fighters of all sides ( there were DMZ's on the front line in central beirut were factions would be forgotten, in order to buy dope and a little sexual distraction- and only drug dealers were allowed to circulate freely, quite different from arms dealers). this was the time of the famous "red leb'" hash of the late seventies to the early 80's, and made the militias rich.

in afghanistan the soviet fighting mujahedeen were partly supported by the opium and hashish trade. not to mention south east asia ( Cambodia, Laos... the whole golden triangle pratically exploded through the various international and local conflicts) or south america with the current paramilitary vs leftish guerrillas vs local governments vs the USA table dancing...WWII left over amphetamine supplies of the japanese and possibly US army made the Yakuza in Japan ( an agreement with the then weak government to stick to shabu selling drugwise, and make sure to keep foreign drugs out, something which held out until recently)

let's face it, "drugs" by their current legal status and way of being dealt with, mean easy fast criminal / para-legal money, pretty much anywhere around the world. wars, any war, generate money and energy, even if this is wasted. this "war on drugs" situation follows through, it also generates a lot of money for those in the drug business.
which is why they're not planning on setting up lollipop factories in these areas....

b

[FrankenChrist]

Originally Posted by benga

war means good drug business.
in lebanon the bekaa valley farmers switched from traditional hashish farming to semi-industrial crops during the last 15 years of civil war, and developped a good and steady hand in opium poppy growing.
this fed the fighters of all sides ( there were DMZ on the front line in central beirut were factions would be forgotten in order to buy dope and a little sexual distraction, and drug dealers were allowed to circulate freely, quite different from arms dealers). this was the time of the famous "red leb'" hash of the late seventies to the early 80's, and made the militias rich.

in afghanistan the soviet fighting mujahedeen were partly supported by the opium and hashish trade. not to mention south east asia ( Cambodia, Laos... the whole golden triangle pratically exploded through the various international and local conflicts) or south america with the current paramilitary vs leftish guerrillas vs local governments vs the USA table dancing...WWII left over amphetamine supplies made the Yakuza in Japan ( with an agreement with the then weak government to stick to shabu, and make sure to keep foreign drugs out, something which held out until recently)

let's face it, "drugs" by their current legal status and way of being dealt with, mean easy fast criminal / para-legal money, pretty much anywhere around the world. wars, any war, generate money and energy, even if this is wasted. this "war on drugs" situation follows through, it also generates a lot of money for those in the drug business.
which is why they're not planning on setting up lollipop factories in these areas....

b

I can't think of a better example of a downward spiral. We're doing it to ourselves...

[Nagognog2]

The CIA has been responsible for the export/import of heroin since well before the Vietnam War out of the Golden Triangle in Southeast Asia. Bush senior was a director of CIA, so why wouldn't Junior carry on the family tradition?

[FrankenChrist]

Jee-zus. So we're not only inderectly and passively responsible, but also directly and actively?

[Benga]

well when it comes to a having a foreign policy based primarily on economic and strategic objectives, the USA is not very regarding as to the nature of the business done...No western countrie's really virginal but the USA do stick out some. there's what Nag just mentioned, but think also of the money laundering dictactures once backed or set up by the USA in central and south america ( Cuba, but so many more...), the backing of the paramilitaries in Columbia and elsewhere who were funded directly by the cocaine trade ( motive : fear of a anti-american pro-leftist government spreading the infection to places where the USA had economic interest in the area), backing of anti-soviet mujahedeen in afghanistan and when part of them went taliban, hell why not, and also backing up saudi millionaires and traffickers, why not as well, as long as they were anti communist... to summarize, the USA has used cocaine in central and south america, opium and opiates first in south east asia, then in the near middle east with a little hashish on top if the country was that poor. These "drugs" and most of all the money generated by their economy was used for strategic and polotical reasons at one point or another.
of the two main crops opiates have the longest political history of use as such, europeans started the first "opium wars" after all, and they have helped to secure or tumble quite a few regimes indirectly.
cocaine is a more recent mess...
but anyway, it was opiates and cocaine against communism until the 1990's and now it's against hard to grasp enemies that have to be called terrorists,but the rules haven't changed much...

just imagine if the grey/black illegal drugs market was destroyed by some radical change of policy ? what on earth could take its place to buy the guns ? stock options ? Or would the bill just be added to the debt like in the African continent ?

b

Reputation Comments on this post:

Good insights, thanks for the post

[Nagognog2]

Allen Ginsberg to the rescue:

[Alfa]

Who's writing is this? Allen Ginsberg?

[Benga]

Originally Posted by Alfa

Who's writing is this? Allen Ginsberg?

certainly sounds like the howling guy who saw the best minds of his generation etc etc...
nice one !

[Nagognog2]

Yep. That's old Allen hard at work reporting the news.

[Laudaphun]

Originally Posted by Alfa

Well Bush was already very succesfull at creating the largest opium production in the world*, so it's not surprising that Iraq is starting up production as well.

*Opium production Afghanistan in Metric Tons (MT) before and after the US invasion:

2001 - 185
2002 - 3.400
2003 - 3.600
2004 - 4.200
2005 - 4.100
2006 - 6.100

Source: UNODC

I don't doubt this one bit as SWIM comes from a small town and SWIm got very hooked on oxys when they first came out however he RARELY could ever find heroin. Even among older crack/cokehead population most of them said they had never even seen herion before. All of a sudden around 2003ish heroin became all of a sudden overly abundant... in a town where it had never had any significant number of followers... This was actually much better than relying on people with scripts for oxys but SWIM knew that the shit would hit the fan sooner or later and got out while the gettin was good... SWIM ended up opting for bupe treatment because he could not risk further legal trouble, which he saw as an inevitabiltiy... After 6-8 months on bupe many of SWIM's friends went down.

Heroin is invading small towns that have never seen it before to which I can personally attest. My town is just one example. SWIM has been 100% law abiding for 1 1/2 years now... which surprises even SWIM.

[enquirewithin]

Patrick Cockburn, one of the good reporters working from Iraq, continues his story on opium growing in Iraq.

____________________

Opium fields spread across Iraq as farmers try to make ends meet

By Patrick Cockburn Independent Published: 17 January 2008

The cultivation of opium poppies whose product is turned into heroin is spreading rapidly across Iraq as farmers find they can no longer make a living through growing traditional crops.

Afghan with experience in planting poppies have been helping farmers switch to producing opium in fertile parts of Diyala province, once famous for its oranges and pomegranates, north- east of Baghdad.

At a heavily guarded farm near the town of Buhriz, south of the provincial capital Baquba, poppies are grown between the orange trees in order to hide them, according to a local source.

The shift by Iraqi farmers to producing opium was first revealed by The Independent last May and is a very recent development. The first poppy fields, funded by drug smugglers who previously supplied Saudi Arabia and the Gulf with heroin from Afghanistan, were close to the city of Diwaniyah in southern Iraq. The growing of poppies has now spread to Diyala, which is one of the places in Iraq where al-Qa'ida is still resisting US and Iraqi government forces. It is also deeply divided between Sunni, Shia and Kurd and the extreme violence means that local security men have little time to deal with the drugs trade. The speed with which farmers are turning to poppies is confirmed by the Iraqi news agency al-Malaf Press, which says that opium is now being produced around the towns of Khalis, Sa'adiya, Dain'ya and south of Baladruz, pointing out that these are all areas where al-Qa'ida is strong.

The agency cites a local agricultural engineer identified as M S al-Azawi as saying that local farmers got no support from the government and could not compete with cheap imports of fruit and vegetables. The price of fertiliser and fuel has also risen sharply. Mr Azawi says: "The cultivation of opium is the likely solution [to these problems]."

Al-Qa'ida is in control of many of the newly established opium farms and has sometimes taken the land of farmers it has killed, said a local source. At Buhriz, American military forces destroyed the opium farm and drove off al-Qa'ida last year but it later returned. "No one can get inside the farm because it is heavily guarded," said the source, adding that the area devoted to opium in Diyala is still smaller than that in southern Iraq around Amara and Majar al-Kabir.

After being harvested, the opium from Diyala is taken to Ramadi in western Iraq. There are still no reports of heroin laboratories being established in Iraq, unlike in Afghanistan.
Iraq has not been a major consumer of drugs but heroin from Afghanistan has been transited from Iran and then taken to Basra from where it is exported to the rich markets of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the Gulf. Under Saddam Hussein, state security in Basra was widely believed to control local drug smuggling through the city.

The growing and smuggling of opium will be difficult to stop in Iraq because much of the country is controlled by criminalised militias. American successes in Iraq over the past year have been largely through encouraging the development of a 70,000-strong Sunni Arab militia, many of whose members are former insurgents linked to protection rackets, kidnapping and crime. Muqtada al-Sadr, the leader of the powerful Shia militia, the Mehdi Army, says that criminals have infiltrated its ranks.

The move of local warlords, both Sunni and Shia, into opium farming is a menacing development in Iraq, where local political leaders are often allied to gangsters. The theft of fuel, smuggling and control of government facilities such as ports means that gangs are often very rich. It is they, rather than impoverished farmers, who have taken the lead in financing and organising opium production in Iraq.
Initial planting in fertile land west and south of Diwaniya around the towns of Ash Shamiyah, al-Ghammas and Shinafiyah were said to have faced problems because of the extreme heat and humidity. Al-Malaf Press says that it has learnt that the experiments with opium poppy-growing in Diyala have been successful.

Although opium has not been grown in many of these areas in Iraq in recent history, some of the earliest written references to opium come from ancient Iraq. It was known to the ancient Sumerians as early as 3400BC as the "Hul Gil" or "joy plant" and there are mentions of it on clay tablets found in excavations at the city of Nippur just east of Diwaniyah.

Reputation Comments on this post:

Thanks for the update

[Dissociative]

If this is true though, Just think of the new imports...