Iraq is now a transit point for drugs, particularly from Afghanistan. This is not surprising. Drug producers and traffickers thrive on lawlessness.
However, articles like this make me wonder if people ever look at maps.
" Drug traffickers from Afghanistan have begun crossing Iraq to get to Jordan, the exit point for Asia and Europe, said Hamid Ghodse, the president of the International Narcotics Control Board. "
How do they get to Iraq from Afghanistan? Those countries don't share a border. How can landlocked Jordan be an "exit point"? What happened to using Turkey as the transit country to Europe? Why the shift to a more southern route?
I am frustrated by reporting that connects A to C without going through B. There is a much bigger story here, one that has implications for the ongoing violence across the region.
How do drug traffickers get from Afghanistan to Iraq? They cross through Iran. They also have to cross a border into Iraq that is the focus of a fair amount of attention from the US military who say they are trying to stop infiltrators. That border gets a lot of attention from the other side by a paranoid Iranian military, on the watch for threatening moves by the US. Clearly it isn't impossible to cross that border, but who, I wonder, is getting rich?
My understanding of Jordan has been that the country is a transit point to the Gulf states and to Israel, but not historically to Europe or to other parts of Asia. The shift, if in fact a shift has taken place, from the northern route to Turkey to a southern route to Jordan is, therefore, curious.