Begin forwarded message:
From: "Alamaine, IVe" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: September 12, 2008 3:57:55 AM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [ctrl] Battling the tyranny of drugs in Iran
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/12/iran.drugstrade/print
Battling the tyranny of drugs in Iran
Sanctions, the situation in Afghanistan and the legacy of war all
conspire to draw Iranian women into addiction
Soraya Tehrani
guardian.co.uk, Friday September 12 2008 11:00 BST
As reported in the Guardian yesterday, the failure of policies to curb
drug production in Afghanistan is effecting Iran in a catastrophic way.
Western attempts to tackle opium production have failed dismally, so
much
so that our country has become the main route for the opium trade from
Afghanistan, with cheap drugs now widely available on every street
corner
to people in desperate situations.
The result is an already vulnerable population is put at greater risk.
The high number of male deaths from the Iran-Iraq war has resulted in
many women struggling to earn enough to survive. Some of them become
drug
dealers and users. The Islamic Republic has to find better and more
effective ways to support these women, most of whom are single mothers
in
desperate situations.
Poverty in Iran has been aggravated by the global economic crisis and
rising food prices, worsened still by western sanctions that are hitting
ordinary people hard.
I am going to tell you the stories of two unfortunate sisters whom I
have
known very closely and have tried to help regularly for many years:
Layla, a 38-year-old divorcee and Sahar, a 33-year-old single mother
from
downtown Tehran with three teenage sons. Layla and Sahar's father died
from cancer when they were teenagers, and were raised by their mother in
a single parent family.
Because of the family's dire poverty, Layla was forced by her mother to
marry an Afghani refugee in Iran in the late 1980s. After Layla's
daughter Mina was born, Layla's husband was jailed for drug trafficking,
which led not only to a decrease in family income but to a lack of
family
support. Almost immediately after her husband's arrest, Layla turned to
soft drugs and eventually to opium, crack, and heroin. As her addictions
worsened, she turned to prostitution to support them. After serving six
years in prison, Layla's husband returned home. Upon his release, he
took
their daughter Mina without Layla's permission and returned to
Afghanistan. Layla has not seen nor heard from her daughter since 1995
and has no information regarding her whereabouts.
Sahar's dilemma on the other hand started when her ex-husband, Hussein,
was arrested in Zahedan in Sistan and Baluchistan province for smuggling
heroin in 1999. He was caught with one kilogram of heroin and was
sentenced to eight years in jail. As a desperate single mother with low
self-esteem and no education, Sahar struggled to bring up her children
on
her own. Eventually, just like Layla, she turned to drugs to ease her
pain and desperation. She then turned to prostitution to support her
drug
addiction and to provide for her three very young sons.
Sahar tells me:
Due to my own lack of proper education, finance and family support, I
was
desperate to make some money to provide for my children. I didn't want
my
children to end up in jail just like their father did. I had no choice
but to turn to prostitution and gradually started dealing in drugs to
make ends meet. As the punishment for adultery is very severe in Iran, I
had no choice but to apply for divorce while my husband was serving his
jail sentence.
Since smoking hashish did not make any difference to my state of mind, I
gradually turned to harder drugs like opium and then to crack and
heroin.
On many occasions I have been abused while working as a prostitute and
dealing in drugs.
The recent sanctions imposed on Iran have caused the cost of food and
housing to hit the roof. Regrettably, I had no choice but to pull out my
elder son from school, who was on his final year at high school, to
start
a job in a bakery shop in south Tehran.
There are many others in Iran in the same situation as Layla and Sahar,
living in daily despair and pain.
According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, the Iranian government
has
always tried to curb addiction's huge social costs and has been more
supportive of drug treatment than any other government in the Islamic
world.
Even with these measures, the rate of addiction and suffering is not
decreasing. Despite the supportive stance of the government, having a
border with Afghanistan has, of course, not helped the situation. The
authorities have set up many drug rehabilitation and prevention
programmes all over Iran, especially in Tehran. Congress 60 in central
Tehran is one of 600 centres that provide drug treatment across the
country with help from government money. As Nazila Fathi has reported,
there are also over 1200 additional centers offering methadone, free
needles and other services for addicts who are not ready to quit,
including food and treatment for HIV and other infections.
But whilst the violence in Afghanistan and the devastating effect of
food
shortages and sanctions continue, and without the government taking
further social measures, these programmes will only provide symptomatic
relief.
In my opinion, the west needs to be aware that its failed war in
Afghanistan is making the situation worse for poor and vulnerable people
in the region; and just like in Iraq before the invasion of 2003, the
current tough sanctions on Iran are not hitting the regime, but the
ordinary people.
The Iranian government also needs to have a less ideological approach to
the issue of single mothers. It must provide support, social security,
free housing and protection for them, rather than treating them like
pariahs or criminals. Unfortunately, women in Iran, like many other
countries in the Islamic world, feel that there is a social stigma that
acts as a barrier to seeking help. They need to be reassured that it is
OK to come forward, talk about their problems and ask for help. I am
sure
many of my countrymen would agree with me that there need to be some
fundamental changes in men's attitudes to women in general.
Another solution would be to help these women to brush up on their
education and training, to encourage them to enter the workforce. This
would allow them to get themselves and their children out of the vicious
cycle of drugs and poverty, which has dogged them since they were young
girls themselves.
Despite the dreadful experiences of these women over two decades, they
remain sensitive and gentle souls, profoundly grateful for an
opportunity
to talk in safety. Sadly, when people cannot talk safely about such
things, remedies for the problem cannot be identified; the silence means
that the government cannot know why it is that these programmes thus far
have failed to curb the devastating problem of dealing and addiction
Iran. Speaking safely means finally putting an end to the tyranny of
drugs.
Names have been changed to protect the identity of those involved
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2008
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Alamaine, IVe
Grand Forks, ND, US of A
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a
philosopher." - Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
"Being ignorant is not such a shame as being unwilling to learn." -
Poor Richard's Almanack, 1758 (Benjamin Franklin)
~~~~~~~
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