Iran’s Border Police Seize Large Drug Cargo
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Border police forces in Iran’s southeastern province of Sistan and Balouchestan seized a huge cargo of illicit drugs weighing more than 1 ton, a police commander said.
Commander of Sistan and Balouchestan's Border Police Gholam Nabi Kohkan said his forces confiscated 1,171 kilograms of opium and heroin from drug-traffickers in a single operation near the southeastern provincial city of Saravan.
He noted that the border police were informed about a huge cargo of illicit drugs entering the country following intelligence measures and getting information from informants.
The border police forces rushed towards the region to face the traffickers and covered the border area completely, the commander pointed out.
According to Kohkan, police forces clashed with the smugglers and managed to seize the drug cargo, which he said was comprised of opium and heroin.
In recent decades Iran has been hit by drug trafficking, mainly because of its 936- kilometer shared border with Afghanistan, which supplies over 90% of the world's opium, the raw ingredient of heroin.
The United Nations has estimated in the past that opium trafficking accounts for up 15 percent of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product, but the figure is expected to rise as international military and development spending declines with the NATO withdrawal at the end of 2014.
Iran is on a major transit route for drugs being smuggled from Afghanistan to Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and the country's war on drug-traffickers has claimed the lives of nearly 4,000 Iranian police forces over the past 34 years.
According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Iran is netting eight times more opium and three times more heroin than all other countries in the world combined.