Global Ganja Report

The growing paranoia about Iranian hashish flooding the puritanical Persian Gulf states will doubtless be jacked up by the latest busts—three Iranian men arrested off Dubai by security forces of the United Arab Emirates, accused of smuggling 223 kilograms of hash and nearly 20,000 Tramadol pills in the diesel tanks of their dhow. The Sept. 30 bust comes as a 35-year-old Bangladeshi worker was charged with possessing 10,350 Tramadol pills for distribution in the UAE. Days earlier, agents of Kuwait's Drug Control Department nabbed a Kuwaiti citizen and an accused accomplice of unspecified Arab origin in possession of 8 kilograms of hashish and 5,000  Tramadol  tablets. (Gulf News, Sept. 30; Arab Times, Sept. 28)

The Islamic Republic, already harshly at odds with Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, is taking measures to head off tensions with the Arab Gulf states. Brig. Gen. Esmail Ahmadi Moqaddam, commander of Iran's National Police force, speaking Sept. 30 at a Tehran ceremony attended by regional military attachés, said Iranian police are cooperating with the Gulf states in fighting the drug trade. "In a number of joint operations with UAE, Omani and Saudi officers, we managed to dismantle a number of big drug-trafficking bands," he said. (Tasnim, Sept. 30)

Where-ever the  Tramadol is coming from, it is clear that Iran has been established as a transit route for hashish and opiates that originate further east—in Afghanistan and Pakistan. At the other end of Iran, in the provinical city of Saravan, in restive Baluchistan province near the Pakistani border, authorities announced Sept. 29 that border police had seized 1,171 kilograms of opium and heroin in an operation that saw a shoot-out with the traffickers. According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Iran last year seized eight times more opium and three times more heroin than all other countries in the world combined. (Tasnim, Sept. 29)

Cross-post to High Times

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