Tehran (Iran) Battles Drugs, Addiction And Crime

[al-Hasani]

By: A Correspondent in Tehran for Al-Monitor Iran Pulse Posted on May 15.

​​

TEHRAN — Just south of Tehran’s sprawling central bazaar lies a poor neighborhood called Davarze Ghar, or the "entrance to the cave," known locally for drugs and stolen goods. Groups of men and veiled women huddle together around an empty reservoir smoking the noxious amphetamine crystal meth or injecting crack, a processed form of heroin unique to the Islamic Republic.

A line of schoolgirls dressed in smart white and pink uniforms with matching plastic Barbie rucksacks are led past the reservoir by their watchful teacher, clad in a long black chador. Police on motorbikes pass by regularly but do not stop.
“In Tehran, meth is more available than bread,” says Abolfazl, a young man (whose name has been changed along with all the others') in military service fatigues, crouching against the only painted wall in the neighborhood: a huge, brightly colored mural honoring a martyr of Iran’s long war with Iraq. “There’s nothing do here. We smoke meth to forget ourselves.”
The World Drug Report frequently cites Iran as having one of the highest levels of heroin addiction in the world. Officially, Iran has 2 million drug addicts but experts agree that the real figure is significantly higher. The country’s position along the Afghanistan-Europe heroin trafficking routes and stigma among its poorer communities around alcohol are oft-cited reasons for Iran’s centuries-old drug problem. But rising unemployment, high inflation and a currency that has lost over half its value since sanctions were placed on Iran at the start of 2011 have compounded the crisis.
Joblessness has impacted traditional industrial areas such as southern Tehran, where residents also face a sharp rise in their cost of living because of the currency crisis, brought on by the sanctions and poor monetary control by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Arash, who owns a stationery business and buys his paper products from an industrial satellite town, says more than half of the factories have closed down since last year. “Production has fallen fast because it costs so much to import,” he explains. “The town now looks like a war zone.”
Reza, a social worker from nearby Moulavi, says that the closure of factories has led to an unemployment crisis and a sharp rise in drug abuse. Iran has progressive harm-reduction programs in place but Reza says the government has not allocated extra funds because the oil embargo has hit state revenues.
“These people have no jobs and they cannot afford to get married so many become disappointed,” he says, “They head to the north of the city to rob people or burgle houses to support their habit.”
Like drug addiction, no reliable figures exist for crime, but Tehran residents report a noticeable rise in Iran’s traditionally low violent crime rate. Most people have a story of a relative or neighbor who has been a victim of assault or robbery in recent months.
Lack of trust in the currency has forced Iranians to convert their bank savings into dollars and gold, making muggings and burglaries more lucrative for criminals.
“I woke up lying in an open sewer down an alley. They took everything, even my shoes,” says Hamid, who was smothered with a chloroform-soaked rag when he entered what he thought was a taxi. “I was asking everyone for help but they thought I was crazy so I walked home.”
"A year ago I would walk home at any time of night but now I worry about who is coming the other way,” says a student living in a middle-class uptown neighborhood. “The government is robbing the people so many learn from their example.”
A video circulating on YouTube shows a CCTV recording of two armed men in balaclavas enter a Tehran jeweler’s. One points an automatic weapon in the cashier’s face, while the other hurdles the counter, taking cash and jewels.
In another video a man in the street is approached in broad daylight by two men on a motorbike wearing surgical masks. One jumps off wielding a huge knife, mugging and slashing the man before making his getaway.
Similar scenes regularly appear on state-run television, edited with dramatic police raids, and appeals by members of the public for swift justice. They serve as propaganda showing Iran has crime under control.
The head of the national police, Esmail Ahmadi-Moghaddam, said that last year [which ended in March] was the safest on record in history of the Islamic Republic. He issued a near-identical statement the year before. But the authorities' reaction betrays this sanguine view. In a heavy-handed offensive, two robbers were publicly hanged earlier this year in Artists’ Park, Tehran’s most bohemian hang-out.
After CCTV footage of the violent robbery overdubbed with confessions was played on state television, the two were ushered before a judge in a Revolutionary Court within two weeks. Wearing the same clothes as those in the CCTV footage, the two were sentenced to death for "waging war on God."
The head of the judiciary, Sadegh Larijani, confirmed that the harshness of sentence, which is usually reserved for murderers, religious proselytizers and homosexuals, was issued as a deterrent
Most Iranians would likely agree to such sentences for violent criminals, although the victim of the crime reportedly said he wanted the men pardoned from death.
A shopkeeper drinks a small glass of tea outside near Artists’ Park and says: “In Iran, if you steal a wallet you’re executed, if you steal a car they throw you in prison, and if you steal billions you’re free to do whatever you want.”

Read more: Tehran Battles Drugs, Addiction And Crime - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East

 

[al-Hasani]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4nN9Kz-07o

 

[Sun Piwa]

Typicall JEW BS with photos not even in Iran

 

[Hussein]

Typicall JEW BS with photos not even in Iran

shut up. take your medics.

 

[Falcon29]

God help them all, including the ones in Arabic countries. Wherever they are in our countries these issues are tackled. We really should just start cooperating together.

 

[Mozambique Drill]

Iranis, high as kites

I wonder what the Mullahs are smoking, to keep coming up with such insane policies and bravado to take on the world.

Tried a bit of puff in my youth, that's it. Never been tempted by drugs.

 

[al-Hasani]

Poverty and Drug in Islamic Iran of Ahmadinejad & Khamenei - YouTube

 

[haman10]

not just in iran!! happens in other countries too

Is Yemen Chewing Itself to Death?

By Andrew Lee Butters Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2009

By 4 in the afternoon, most men walking the streets of Sana'a are high, or about to get high — not on any sort of manufactured narcotics, but on khat, a shrub whose young leaves contain a compound with effects similar to those of amphetamines. Khat is popular in many countries of the Arabian peninsula and the Horn of Africa, but in Yemen it's a full-blown national addiction. As much as 90% of men and 1 in 4 women in Yemen are estimated to chew the leaves, storing a wad in one cheek as the khat slowly breaks down into the saliva and enters the bloodstream. The newcomer to Yemen's ancient capital can't miss the spectacle of almost an entire adult population presenting cheeks bulging with cud, leaving behind green confetti of discarded leaves and branches.

(Read "Can Amphetamines Help Cure Cocaine Addiction?")
For its many devotees, khat is a social lubricant on a par with coffee or alcohol in the West. Indeed, because chewing the leaf isn't forbidden by Islam, "khat is alcohol for Muslims," says Yahya Amma, the head merchant at the Agriculture Suq, one of the largest khat markets in the city. "You can chew it and still go to prayers." The leaf's energy-boosting and hunger-numbing properties help university students focus on their homework, allows underpaid laborers to work without meals and, according to local lore, offers the same help to impotent men that Westerners seek in Viagra. Evening khat ceremonies — regular salon gatherings (usually only of men) to chew and chat about matters great and small — are the country's basic form of socializing.

(Read "U.N. World Drug Report.")
But khat's detractors say the leaf is destroying Yemen. At around $5 for a bag (the amount typically consumed by a single regular user in a day) it's an expensive habit in a country where about 45% of the population lives below the poverty line. (Most families spend more money on khat than on food, according to government figures.) A khat-addled public is more inclined to complacency about the failings of the government, khat ceremonies reinforce the exclusion of women from power and, as is obvious to anyone finding a government office nearly empty on a weekday morning, khat is keeping the country awake well past its bedtime.

"You sit up discussing all your problems and think you've solved everything, but in fact you haven't done anything in the last four hours, because you've just been chewing khat and all your problems actually got worse," says Adel al-Shujaa, a professor of political science at Sana'a University and the head of the Yemen Without Khat Association. Plus, he says, "all the decisions you've made are bad because you've made them while on khat."

But the worst thing about khat may be that it is sucking Yemen dry.

The plant thrives in the high hill country outside Sana'a, where nearly every patch of irrigated land is covered in khat. Unlike coffee, which Yemenis claim was first cultivated here, khat is easy to grow and harvest. And though cultivating and dealing the leaf doesn't generate the kind of instant wealth associated with growing poppies in Afghanistan or coca in Colombia, it certainly provides a steadier income than growing vegetables does — that's why nearly all of the country's arable land is devoted to khat. And khat needs a lot of water, which is scarce in Yemen.

Khat fields are typically flooded twice a month, consuming about 30% of the country's water — most of which is pumped from underground aquifers filled thousands of years ago, and replenished only very slowly by the occasional rainfall that seeps through the layers of soil and rock. A recent explosion of khat cultivation has drawn water levels down to the point where they are no longer being replenished. The option of pumping desalinated water over long pipelines from coastal plants is too expensive for such a poor country. Yemen is in real danger of becoming the world's first country to run out of water.

"I tell UNHCR that they should start buying tents [for the communities that would be forced to move in search of drinking water]," says Michael Klingler, a hydrologist and the local director of GTZ, the German government's technical-assistance team, which is advising Yemen on water-management issues.

A massive drought — accelerated by khat cultivation — and the resultant population displacement could have a devastating impact in one of the most fragile countries in the Middle East. A separatist insurgency in the south is threatening to break the country apart, while pirates from Somalia are menacing the coast. Al-Qaeda, meanwhile, has long seen the lawless tribal lands in the northern mountains as a potential sanctuary.

Quitting khat would double the amount of household water available, says Klingler, but that may only slow the onset of crisis. The hydrologist argues that Yemen needs to revert to consuming only as much water as it collects from rains — and to import most of its food from abroad.

Despite the danger, Yemen isn't about to go cold turkey anytime soon. Not only are most of the country's leaders landowners deeply involved in khat production, the leaf may be one of the few things still holding Yemen together. Says Ashraf Al-Eryani, one of GTZ's local program officers, "Khat plays a big role in keeping people calm, and keeping them off the streets. But it's also delaying change. It's hard to convince people to act now."

See TIME's Pictures of the Week.

read more at Is Yemen Chewing Itself to Death? - TIME

Source: http://www.defence.pk/forums/middle-east-africa/276743-yemeni-addiction.html#ixzz2eWUwckoG

 

[al-Hasani]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JqhCZ5Uq44

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-KBKvDfDrM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iu5jjIJANMs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNcnPKqrWOA

 

[Yzd Khalifa]

shut up. take your medics.

The guy is sick, better to leave him alone

Typicall JEW BS with photos not even in Iran

Dude, we can take you to the psych if you want to

 

[Peykan]

shut up. take your medics.

what is your problem?

 

[anilindia]

Again Iran (Shia) baised thread....

 

[Sun Piwa]

what is your problem?

Let him speak. It's a real pleasure for me to be attacked by MOSSAD crotales disguised.
I've seen for the moment 0 real arabs hating iranians.

 

[Peykan]

HIRMAN, Iran — Sitting next to the half-open door of a Russian-made Mi-17 transport helicopter, the general who leads the Islamic Republic’s antinarcotics department pointed toward the rugged landscape of Iran’s volatile southeast, where its border meets those of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“This is where the drug convoys for years crossed into our country, almost with impunity,” Brig. Gen. Ali Moayedi said in Persian. Below him, sharp-edged mountains gave way to desert lands scarred for mile after mile by trenches nearly 15 feet deep and concrete walls reaching a height of 10 feet.

The earthworks were built by his men in recent years in a determined effort to stop the most prolific flow of drugs in the world, a flood of heroin and opium bound for the Persian Gulf and Europe. Iran, as the first link in that long and lucrative smuggling chain, has for decades fought a lonely battle against drugs that its leaders see as religiously inspired, saying it is their Islamic duty to prevent drug abuse.

Nearly a decade ago Sistan va Baluchestan Province was an active battlefield, where more than 3,900 Iranian border police officers lost their lives fighting often better-equipped Afghan and Pakistani drug gangs along nearly 600 miles of Iran’s eastern border. In those days, smugglers with night-vision equipment would roll over the border in all-terrain vehicles with heavy weapons, actively engaging Iranian law enforcement forces wherever they found them. Security forces were at times dying by the dozen each day.

Now, the country has made a huge turnaround. Its forces are seizing the highest amounts of opiates and heroin worldwide, according to a report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, which has advised Iran through out the period.

Tehran has long been shy about inviting reporters to these borderlands, particularly during the difficult years when the police were dying in droves. But now, with the prospect of negotiations with the West over Iran’s disputed nuclear enrichment program, experts say, Iran’s leaders are eager to grab credit for their efforts. During previous negotiations Iranian diplomats often pointed at Iran’s high human costs from trying to stop the drug trade, and one influential political adviser, Hamid Reza Taraghi, said that Iran expected to be politically “rewarded” for its efforts.

Up in the air, General Moayedi pointed to the Pakistani-Afghan side of the border, which he said once crawled with smugglers. “Do you see?” he exclaimed, pointing through one of the round windows of the helicopter. “There is nothing there!”

White watchtowers stood like chess pieces at mile intervals along the Iranian side of the border, facing the complete emptiness of Afghanistan and Pakistan. “The smugglers still can come all the way to Iran; nobody stops them on their side,” Mr. Moayedi said as his aviator sunglasses reflected the intense sun. “But we have made it nearly impossible for them to enter our country.”

Squeezed between a tall plainclothes officer and General Moayedi’s personal bodyguard, Antonino de Leo, the Italian representative for the United Nations drug office in Tehran, showered the Iranians with praise — “because they really deserve it,” he said.

Mr. De Leo, in mountaineering shoes and backpack but remaining true to his stylish Italian background with a white flannel scarf around his neck, is very different from his uniformed Iranian counterparts. But, he said, “I need these people and they need me.”

At the same time that the Iranians were netting eight times more opium and three times more heroin than all the other countries in the world combined, Mr. De Leo said, his office was the smallest in the region and he had to cut back some programs, like drug sniffer dog training, because Western nations had cut back on financing.

“These men are fighting their version of the Colombian war on drugs, but they are not funded with billions of U.S. dollars and are battling against drugs coming from another country,” Mr. De Leo said.

While his colleagues in Afghanistan received $40 million a year in direct aid for counternarcotics programs, he said, they treated 100 addicts last year while Iran was treating hundreds of thousands. His budget was barely $13 million stretched over four years. “It’s all politics,” he said.

When the helicopter landed here at a fort in this desolate landscape it was too close to a party tent, blowing off its roof and setting off panic among the soldiers who had spent four days preparing for the V.I.P. visit.

Zahra, the 11-year-old daughter of one of the 3,900 policemen killed on border duty, welcomed the general, saying she missed her father but was happy that he was with God. Her mother, dressed in a black chador, nodded approvingly.

Armed soldiers stood guard as General Moayedi and Mr. De Leo inspected intercepted packages of opium, heroin and morphine. “There are 100,000 NATO troops based in Afghanistan,” the general said. “Why are they not stopping the flow of drugs into our country?”

He gestured at the latest models of pickup trucks, used to patrol the long straight roads along the fortified walls, and said Iran could easily fend for itself. “But as others sleep comfortably in other countries, my men are here during the hot desert days and cold nights, trying to intercept drugs that would otherwise end up in the West. We are making a sacrifice.”

Mr. De Leo, who is one of the very few Westerners in Iran in direct, daily contact with top law enforcement officials, said his office was under pressure from Western activist groups like Human Rights Watch, which have expressed alarm over the sharp increase in hangings of convicted drug dealers.

Hundreds have been executed in recent years, making Iran the second leading country in the world in death sentences, after China. Mr. De Leo said that he, too, was bothered by the increase in executions, but that the punishments were meted out by Iran’s judiciary, not by its police force.

And though Iran routinely puts drug dealers to death, it also has a range of modern drug rehabilitation programs for its hard-core addicts, who number 1.2 million by official count. The addicts are treated as patients and given methadone and other treatments rather than prison sentences, Iranian families of addicts and foreign diplomats say.

General Moayedi said that he did not concern himself with politics, and that in any case he considered the fight against drugs to be a religious duty.

“But,” he said, “imagine if we just let all those drugs flow freely through our country, toward the West. I guess then the world would understand what we have been doing here for all these years.”

posted by Serpentine

.......

 

[Hussein]

what is your problem?

the fanatic words and totally bullshit against jews (i say jews , check his words)
so not only this is stupid , but this is a shame to write such thing

so no i don't have problem but this "guy" seems to have big troubles

Let him speak. It's a real pleasure for me to be attacked by MOSSAD crotales disguised.
I've seen for the moment 0 real arabs hating iranians.

maybe Mossad is in you a.. go check it