Iraq Used For Transit Of Drugs, Officials Say

"Of course not, we would kill them," he said. "Everything about it is wrong."

That long-standing stigma here surrounding narcotics use discourages addicts from seeking help, making it hard for the government to gather data on drug use and addiction, said Sirwan K. Ali, a psychiatrist at the Health Ministry who manages Iraq's substance abuse control program.

"The drug problem in Iraq is like the early part of an epidemic, a rising storm, and if it increases we cannot withstand the severity because we have no infrastructure to control it, no experience in treating it," he said. "But it is almost impossible for us to know the size of the problem because of the security situation and because it is kept in the dark. Until recently, these things were not spoken about."

Even in the absence of much hard data, the government is taking steps it hopes will prevent the flow of drugs from escalating. When it reestablished capital punishment last year, it made drug dealing the only nonviolent crime punishable by death. The Health Ministry has established committees in each province to monitor what Ali called a "sharp rise" in addiction rates and smuggling.

Last November, when the ministry held its first conference on illegal drugs, it published an illustrated book, "Drugs and Their Influence on Society," which compiled national statistics on arrests and hospitalizations. A drawing on the back cover showed a young man crouching with an agonized expression as a demonic figure emerged from the smoke of his cigarette.

But the assembled data reflected only a fraction of Iraq's drug problem because reporting from provincial health authorities and police was sporadic, Ali said. For example, from May to November 2004, police nationwide reported only nine smuggling incidents and 24 cases of people taking illegal drugs.

But police in several Iraqi provinces say drug arrests have become increasingly common in cities, particularly in Baghdad, Iraq's largest city with about 5 million inhabitants, and in places frequented by religious pilgrims from abroad such as Najaf and Karbala, which are home to Shiite Muslim shrines. Ghazali, the Najaf border police chief, said drug smugglers often bury their contraband in the desert before transporting it into Saudi Arabia.

In its statement last month, the International Narcotics Control Board said that authorities in Jordan had noted a major increase in drug trafficking from Iraq over the previous year and that in April, 3 million pills of Fenethylline, a stimulant with effects similar to amphetamines, had been seized at the Iraqi border. "Significant quantities" of cannabis resin and chemicals used to manufacture heroin had also been discovered, the statement said.

For Iraq's security forces, perhaps the most unsettling recent incident came in late May, when six Iranians were arrested in the northern city of Sulaymaniyah with what police said were large quantities of an unspecified type of narcotics. About 50 gallons of a material described in local news reports as "a precursor to explosives" were also found at the scene, Iraq's al-Watan daily newspaper reported.

Last October, 21 Iranians and Afghans were arrested while trying to enter Iraq with weapons and illegal drugs in their possession, border police in Sulaymaniyah said.

"All of this is because the borders are not well protected," said Waleed Sharka, a member of the Iraqi National Assembly and one of the few politicians to speak out publicly on the issue. "Now the terrorists are bringing the drugs with them."

Special correspondents Bassam Sebti and Omar Fekeiki in Baghdad and Saad Sarhan in Najaf contributed to this report.