Iranian occupying authorities spread drugs to destroy Ahwazi Arab society

Ahwazna

According to Iranian regime media, around 10 Ahwazi Arabs die every day as a result of drug abuse, with approximately 150,000 Ahwazis registered as drug addicts.  Drug-related deaths are one of the leading causes of premature death amongst Ahwazi people, along with traffic accidents, strokes, and burns. These tragic figures reflect an even darker reality, with many in the region believing that the regime is deliberately encouraging the proliferation of drugs among the region’s young people as another weapon of oppression and control.

Despite its abundant oil and gas wealth Al-Ahwaz region ranks second and third globally in regard to unemployment and poverty due to the regime’s racist exclusion policies against Arabs and marginalization which, as admitted by regime officials, has resulted in the unequal distribution of Ahwazi wealth which is given mainly to Persian provinces and Persian settlers who were settled in Al-Ahwaz by the regime as they sought to slowly colonies the region further. However, one of the most devastating key weapons which systematically targets Ahwazi Arabs is the spread of hard drugs, which have been introduced as part of a deliberate disempowerment strategy by regime intelligence services in Ahwazi towns and villages.

Many prominent Ahwazi figures believe that the regime intelligence services are trafficking drugs in the region as part of a wider effort to further weaken and destroy the Ahwazi social fabric and to destroy national aspirations for well educated, intellectuals and supporters of Ahwazi freedom in their struggle against the policies of the occupying regime.

Ahwazi rights groups are warning against the proliferation of narcotics among Ahwazi Arab youth, mostly aged between 16 and 23, with some children as young as 13 developing a drug habit. Levels of addiction have risen sharply in recent years to more than double the former rate, with barbiturates available at pharmacists without any prescription accounting for much of this spike in use.  The sedative-like and highly addictive painkiller Tramadol, available without a prescription in the Ahwaz region, is widely used, leading to high rates of addiction, especially among young adults. This proliferation of narcotics is widely viewed as part of the regime’s policy of weakening Ahwazi society.

These pills are more addictive and far more harmful than the drugs which the regime previously spread among the Ahwazi youth. The levels of drug proliferation and addiction seen now in Ahwaz are not seen anywhere else in the world.

“The tragedy of spread of these drugs in the Al-Ahwaz region is that the number of addicts continues to increase sharply because the Iranian occupying authorities are distributing drugs and protecting dealers from arrest and prosecution, instead arresting innocent Ahwazi civilians”, Ahwaz Human Rights Organization quoted.

Even the crimes of Israel towards Palestinians pale in comparison to the Iranian regime’s systemic crimes against the Arab peoples of Ahwaz. Iran’s shameless occupying regime seems unsatisfied with the extent of its oppression, including the death penalty, stealing the water resources, ongoing ethnic cleansing and the expulsion of Ahwazi workers from their jobs.

The regime’s flooding the region with drugs is widely viewed, therefore, as another lethal weapon in the regime’s arsenal intended to disempower, kill and eliminate Ahwazi Arab citizens from their homeland to effectively fulfill the regime’s ethnic cleansing agenda which is a continuation of Persian ethnic cleansing policies against Ahwazi Arabs from previous eras and regimes via various procedures.

This poisonous material is being used for political and racist purposes and it is the view of many observers that the Iranian authorities are responsible for it and for the spread of the phenomenon of addiction and drug use in circles of Ahwazi areas in order to destroy Ahwazi communities in addition to the liquidation of the Ahwazi Arab revolutionaries under the pretext of drug trafficking by accusing them of trafficking narcotics.