#Ahwazna – DRUG ABUSE SCOURGE DESTROYS YOUNG ARABS’ LIVES IN AHWAZ
In the hands of the Iranian regime, drugs weapon is not just used against its opponents internally, as the regime deliberately and secretly export it to the neighboring countries or the world by its Revolutionary Guards Corps and intelligence services to sow this subversive substance and threaten their societies and create instability.
We can see the success of this policy in the Arab Ahwaz region, which ranks first in level of drug addiction and abuse in Iran, according to a new report.
On Monday, Hamid Sarrami, the senior advisor to the Director of the Research and Education Headquarter for Combating Narcotics, said that drug abuse is being found among Ahwazi adolescents as young as 15. Also, now Ahwazi youth face a new enemy that sends them to prison. The Iranian regime knows very well that under the influence of certain narcotics, the user loses awareness of nationality, family loyalty, education, and identity. Instead, all that matters to them is where they can obtain drugs from to satisfy their habit, which becomes their number one priority in life.
The trade and use of illegal drugs has become a phenomenon in Ahwaz, where substances like crack, heroine and morphine are easy to purchase for young people. In many places, it has become cheaper than fruits, but unlike the fruit, drugs are widely available in all seasons. For this reason, the proportion of drug addicts in Ahwaz, according to some official statistics is the highest mostly among the younger generation.
According to state media, around 10 Ahwazi Arabs die every day as a result of drug abuse, and only in 2014 approximately 150,000 Ahwazis are 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: Many in the region believe 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 after Baluchistan province in Iran in regard to unemployment, poverty, and marginalization due to the regime’s racist exclusionary policies against Arabs. This has resulted in the Ahwazi wealth being distributed mainly among Persian provinces and Persian settlers who settled in Al-Ahwaz. 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. Because of the absence of any effective civil centers in Ahwaz to raise awareness and treat drug addicts, this issue has burdened large number of Ahwazi families.
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.
This nasty business is managed by Iranian’s highest security authorities known as Revolutionary Guards and its affiliated intelligence service which no one can criticize or confront. Hence, the IRGC is reaping huge profits internally and internationally from this destructive trafficking.
One of the regime’s methods is to distract as much as possible the large number of young people to be eliminated from being productive members of society in order to keep their potential threat away of the regime. And in light of the systematic abuse and inhumane practices perpetrated against ethnic groups in Iran, such as Arabs and Kurds and Baluchis and other ethnic groups, the regime has become more active in the dissemination and distribution of drugs in those areas in an effort to disempower dissident communities.
The drug trade is practiced openly and under the eyes of the regime and its security services. Intervention from the regime solely occurs just to arrest the victims of drug users rather than the promoters and distributors in those areas. And to enforce its horror among these non-Persian nations, the regime carries on executions of drug users in order to impose military dominance in the non-Persian ethnic regions and to intimidate others from thinking against the regime. official statistics and semi-official show that the percentage of drugs addictions among young people living in non-Persian regions such as Ahwaz and Baluchistan and Kurdistan greater proportion than the rest of Persian cities and perhaps one of the reasons is the widespread unemployment and deprivation, but the most important reason remains as the ease of accessibility of these drugs in those areas.
Viewed as never-ending threat to the state, Ahwazis have always faced vicious attempts by Iranian clerics to exterminate them. All these efforts have failed, and they have only made Ahwazis more determined to survive, ensure the survival of their culture and preserve their heritage. This leads us to seriously ask: is this spread of drugs on a very large scale is yet another attempt by the state to destroy the young minds of Ahwazi and their Arabism?
The Iranian authorities are attempting to liquidate the Ahwazi Arab revolutionaries under the pretext of drug trafficking by accusing them of trafficking narcotics. Another method of the regime is to jail political opponents with drug addicts and flood the prisons with drugs to cause psychological distress against ethnic minority political prisoners and eventually they get rid of them this way instead of execution.
The Iranian regime, which claims to fight against drugs trafficking, does nothing, except creating propaganda by arrest and execution of some of the small low level drug dealers. The regime wins on both sides of the drug trafficking, internally via reaping excessive profits and plunging young people into the quagmire of drugs and keep them away from being potential threat to the regime. In the other side, the Iranian regime earns billions in various foreign currencies from overseas drug trafficking operations, channeling the money into sponsoring its terrorists proxies to spread its toxic sectarian revolution’ and to inflict instability and destruction on neighbouring nations.
Source: Ahwaz Monitor
