Shafaq News – Al-Sulaymaniyah

Kurdistan Region’s internal security (Asayish) arrested a drug dealer in Al-Sulaymaniyah with a substantial amount of crystal methamphetamine, the General Directorate of Anti-Narcotics said on Sunday.

In a statement, the directorate explained that an Asayish unit in the Raparin administration carried out a special operation on October 4 under a judicial warrant, seizing about five kilograms of the drug intended for distribution within the Region.

In August, authorities in the Kurdistan Region burned over 600 kilograms of seized narcotics in Erbil as part of 1.9 tons confiscated in recent operations. Officials reported 5,746 arrests in June, including 1,576 drug-related cases, warning that the Region has become a major transit route for narcotics smuggled from Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.

Drug trafficking has intensified across Iraq and the Kurdistan Region in recent years, with security forces reporting record seizures of crystal meth and Captagon, linked to cross-border networks operating through Syria and Iran, which have increasingly turned Iraq from a transit route into a consumer market.

Read more: Iraq fights back against synthetic drug flood engulfing the Middle East