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Iranian Drug Dealers in Disguise in Holy Iraqi City

December 02, 2003
Reuters
Michael Georgy

KERBALA -- Undercover policemen watch closely as thousands swarm around sacred Shi'ite shrines. But in the holy city of Kerbala it's difficult to find the criminals they are looking for -- Iranian drug dealers posing as pilgrims.

''The borders have to be closed. These dealers should not be let in to Iraq. We have to protect our youth,'' cleric Hussein al-Kathim said. ''Otherwise future generations will be in danger.''

The fall of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in April brought freedom to the oppressed Shi'ites of Kerbala. It also generated business for Iranian drug traffickers who exploited open borders in the mayhem after the war.

Police officials and ordinary Iraqis say a drug problem has emerged for the first time in Kerbala, fuelled mostly by an influx of Iranian drug traffickers.

Heroin, hashish and other narcotics are sold to Iraqi dealers or individuals. The goods are hidden in clothes in crowded markets. Elderly women selling syrupy tea on sidewalks also offer drugs.

It can't compare with drug deals in New York or Miama. But small amounts of hashish are enough to alarm Kerbala, a conservative Iraqi city that is home to some of Shi'ite Islam's holiest sites and that prides itself on purity.

''This has never happened before in Kerbala. We have launched a big campaign to fight it,'' Kerbala police chief Abbas al-Hassani told Reuters.

''We have patrols of 60 policemen assigned especially to drugs. We are containing the problem. We were arresting 10 to 15 dealers a day. Now it is less frequent. But we will keep cracking down.''

Dealing or using hard drugs is still punishable by death because Iraq has yet to draw up a constitution after Saddam's fall. But Hassani said it was easier to control the Iranian pilgrims under the former regime.

''Saddam's agents used to charge every Iranian $500. They would be transported from the border and watched at all times, in their hotels and in the street. He bugged their rooms,'' said Hassani.

These days, policemen face the challenge of catching dealers in the chaos of street markets around Kerbala's sprawling golden-domed shrines.

Throngs of Iranians walk past stalls stacked with clothes, slippers and cigarettes. Donkey carts clatter past televisions playing videotapes of Saddam's agents blowing up political prisoners in dirt pits. Videos of self-flagellating men remind Shi'ites of their religious duties.

Beer and whiskey are also now on offer in a city where posters of Shi'ite leaders hang on many buildings and women are covered in black shawls.

Apart from commercial transactions, there is little interaction between Iranians and Iraqis, who fought a brutal war in the 1980s, making it difficult for undercover police to gather intelligence. But still, they are making arrests.

``There are arrests here every day -- of young and old,'' said Alaa Hameed, a teenage shoe vendor. MG

http://famulus.msnbc.com/FamulusIntl/reuters12-02-074030.asp?reg=MIDEAST

Due to the report by FOX's Mansoor Ijaz about 10 days ago, this article from October might interest readers.

Iranian Force Has Long Ties to Al Qaeda;
Terrorism Support Group Operates Independently of Iran's Elected Leaders

By Dana Priest and Douglas Farah
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, October 14, 2003; Page A17

The elite Iranian force believed to be protecting Saad bin Laden and two dozen al Qaeda leaders is one of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' five branches, and has been given the mission of "exporting the Islamic revolution" by training, arming and collaborating with foreign terrorist groups -- even those who do not share Iran's fundamentalist Shiite brand of Islam.

The Jerusalem Force, also known as the Qods Force, is highly trained and well-funded. It has provided instruction to more than three dozen Shiite and Sunni "foreign Islamic militant groups in paramilitary, guerrilla and terrorism" tactics, according to a recent U.S. intelligence analysis.

Groups including Hezbollah, or Party of God; the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas); and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have received arms and training at one of several specialized sites in Iran, according to that document.

The Jerusalem Force's former commander, Ahmad Vahidi, allegedly helped plan the 1994 bombing of the Amia Jewish Center in Buenos Aires, in which 85 civilians were killed and 230 injured, according to Argentine intelligence officials and others.

The group has also maintained ties with the al Qaeda terrorist network for more than a decade, according to U.S. and European intelligence officials. Senior al Qaeda leaders first met and formed a tactical alliance with the nascent Jerusalem Force in Sudan in the early 1990s, according to intelligence officials. The group was creating terrorist training camps there at the same time that Osama bin Laden had begun to create his own financial and training infrastructure.

Bin Laden's second-in-command, Ayman Zawahiri, used his decade-old relationship with Vahidi, then commander of the Jerusalem Force, to negotiate a safe harbor for some of al Qaeda's leaders who were trapped in the mountains of Tora Bora, Afghanistan, in 2001, according to a European intelligence official.

The group is "a state within a state, and that is why they are able to offer protection to al Qaeda," one European intelligence analyst said. "The Force's senior leaders have long-standing ties to al Qaeda, and, since the fall of Afghanistan, have provided some al Qaeda leaders with travel documents and safe haven."

The organization's autonomy from Iran's elected leaders underscores the deep split between the moderate government of President Mohammad Khatami and the unelected hard-line clerics who control much of the nation's security apparatus.

Khatami, who has repeatedly denied that senior al Qaeda figures are in Iran, has no control over security organs such as the Revolutionary Guard, which answer to the office of the supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Although Iran is a Shiite Muslim nation, the Jerusalem Force's willingness to work with rival Sunni Muslim organizations has made it particularly dangerous as a liaison between Iran and other Islamic groups that share its goal of destroying secular Muslim states.

The Jerusalem Force has agents in "most countries with substantial Muslim populations," according to the U.S. analysis. "Their mission is to form relationships with Islamic militant and radical groups and offer financial support either to the groups at large or to Islamic figures within them who are sympathetic to the principles and foreign policy goals of the Iranian government."

The Force's training regime includes psychological and guerrilla warfare operations, with emphasis on the use of hand grenades, mines, booby-trap techniques, camouflage and ambushes. Its terrorist-related training includes assassinations, kidnapping, torture and explosives, according to the U.S. intelligence analysis.