Why is the west funding Iran’s deadly war on drugs? by Fazel Hawramy in the Guardian
Representatives of more that 50 countries will meet in Vienna shortly to determine the level of international support that Iran receives for its continuing war on drugs.
This comes amid concern about the increasing number of executions for drug-related offences in Iran. Six more people were recently hanged in the city of Kermanshah – executions that a senior figure in the judiciary described as “one of the triumphs of Iran”.
As part of the counter-narcotics programme, Iran receives a constant flow of technical support from the UK, the US and other western governments, either directly or through the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
The UNODC’s Yuri Fedetov has consistently praised Iran’s drug war efforts, yet has said nothing about its human rights abuses, despite the fact that all other UN programs are supposed to be subservient to the Human Rights charter.
If the west is serious about supporting reform in Iran, it must rethink whether it’s right for taxpayers to continue funding a programme that leads to the execution of hundreds of people every year.
The message that we’ve consistently given to the entire world is that if you violate human rights in the war on drugs, we not only won’t call you on it, we’ll support you with money.
Our support for the war on drugs in Iran is a sham.
We (the CIA) use the DEA to spy on other countries, under the guise of “helping” them. Then they hurt them.
It’s the oldest government program in the world.
The letter gangs are all located in the same city,,two doors down from each other,competing for budget dollars and apparently for which one can get caught doing the stupidest operation.
By the way. That drone over Iran did not “crash” it was shot down!
It was “taken over”. The Iranians overrode the control signal. You have to read several news pieces, and read between some lines, but I’m pretty sure that’s what happened.
It’s bad enough when so-called civilized societies employ prohibitionism. In the hands of despots, prohibition becomes deadly. Trusting tyrants with prohibition is like trusting them with nerve gas or some other weapon of mass destruction.
Things were very different in Iran prior to the emergence of the industrial states and the drug war. In old Persia it was an act of hospitality to one’s houseguests to offer them a hit off the opium pipe. A small amount of opium was kept in households for that purpose. The drug was controlled by Persian culture in sets and settings that kept it from becoming a significant social problem. Since Persia consumed all the opium it produced, there were no exports of the drug that might have led to problems in other cultures having little or no familiarity with it.
But along comes prohibition, and once again we have drug executions in Iran and China that exemplify the fact that the progression of time, and social progress, are not necessarily correlated.
The Donald has quoted Ron Paul as expressing a position that Iran should have nuclear weapons. It is my understanding that Mr. Trump is not a WoD ideologue. Such a position by any presidential aspirant may be very troubling to some voters.
Grab a copy of “The politics of heroin” Covers the CIA’s involvement in the drug trade from Guatemala in the 50’s To the present drug trafficking from Afghanistan