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ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq \u2013 Iraqi security forces on Thursday announced the arrest of an alleged drug trafficker in Sulaimani, seizing one kilogram of psilocybin mushrooms and two kilograms of marijuana, in a security operation coordinated with Kurdish anti-narcotic forces.<\/p>\n
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The operation, conducted in cooperation with Sulaimani\u2019s Narcotics Control Directorate, resulted in the \u201carrest of a drug trafficker and the seizure of one kilogram of narcotic magic mushrooms, in addition to two kilograms of marijuana in Sulaimani,\u201d Kirkuk\u2019s Narcotics Affairs Directorate said in a statement.<\/p>\n
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Counter-narcotics operations have intensified across the country under Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi, who said Friday that Iraq is \u201cwaging a war\u201d against corruption and drugs, stressing that there will be \u201cno leniency or retreat in this battle.\u201d<\/p>\n
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In May, Iraq\u2019s interior ministry revealed that it had seized more than one and a half tons of narcotics since the beginning of 2026, and issued more than 40 death sentences.<\/p>\n
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In January, Iraq\u2019s National Security Service (INSS) said it arrested more than 800 individuals on drug-related charges in 2025, in addition to seizing hundreds of kilograms of narcotic substances. The numbers from INSS do not account for all of Iraq\u2019s drug-related arrests and seizures, as multiple official bodies work on combating the spread of narcotics.<\/p>\n
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Meanwhile, more than 2,700 suspects were arrested on drug-related charges across the Kurdistan Region in 2025, Arkan Bibani, spokesperson for the Kurdistan Region\u2019s anti-narcotics directorate, told The New Region in February.<\/p>\n
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Despite imposing severe penalties, Iraq continues to face an escalating drug problem that has intensified since the US invasion in 2003. Iraq’s stringent narcotics laws, which impose death or life sentences for drug-related offenses, are a response to the severity of the crisis but have yet to curb the increasing drug use and trafficking fully.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00a0 ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq \u2013 Iraqi security forces on Thursday announced the arrest of an alleged…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":276833,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[14],"tags":[94],"class_list":["post-276832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-iraq","tag-iraq"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/117207843658775428","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276832\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}