November 30, 2008

BAGHDAD — Since her husband was killed, Um Ramzi has been in deep pain and her life and that of her three children has turned upside down.

"Since my husband died we have been losing everything we had. I could not find a job and just last week my son was hospitalized suffering from malnutrition," the widow told IslamOnline.net.

With an avalanche of crises and depression, she started using cocaine believing it would alleviate her pain.

"The drug makes me forget everything. At least I can sleep and forget all my problems," said Um Ramzi.

"I know it is wrong, but only a person who went through what I had been through would understand my situation."

Experts and aid workers affirm she is not only, blaming the rise of drug addiction only the horrors of war.

"Many Iraqis search for easy ways to forget their harsh living status and they find their comfort in drugs," Salah Abdul-Kareem, an aid worker in Baghdad, told IOL.

"The lack of employment, displacement and the dangerous living conditions all have been driving Iraqis to serious addiction."

Ameer Mohamed Bayat, a psychologist, say Iraqis turn to drugs to cope with the loss of loved ones or to escape their daily struggle to make ends meet.

"In the past, I used to work with different kinds of patients, but now drug addiction is what I deal with everyday in my clinic," he said.

"Bad security and the lack of essential needs have been driving Iraqis to drugs."

Iraqis have seen their lives sliding from bad to worse since the 2003 US-led invasion, as the country remains gripped by violence and lacks many life essentials.

New Afghanistan

Worse still, the rise in drug addiction among Iraqis comes as narcotics become available everywhere in the war-torn country.

Abdul-Kareem, the Baghdad aid worker, notes that like Afghanistan, the world's number one producer of opium from which heroin is derived, all kinds of drugs are now found across Iraq.

"From marijuana to cocaine, morphine, crack and heroine, Iraq is turning into the new Afghanistan," he laments.

With the unrestricted availability, the addict can find a drug to use with less than five dollars.

Drug dealers are also especially active in the areas where policing is less present due to militia’s presence.

Baghdad districts like Sadr, Alawi, Dora, Bab al-Muadhem and Gazellia have reportedly become hotbeds for drug dealing.

Officiasl contend that Iraq has become a transit point in the flow of drugs from neighboring countries since the invasion.

"Most of the drugs come through Iran, but we have also arrested people carrying from Jordan and Syria," Col. Abbas al-Zein, a member of the police investigative department, told IOL.

"Unfortunately, we have corrupt officers who allow the entrance."

Zein says that his department has arrested dozens belonging to drug gangs who sell different kinds of drugs nationwide, especially in Baghdad, Najaf, Karbala and Basra.

"Each time we arrest gang members, addicts are nearby," he added.

"However, they are victims and we cannot take them to prison too."