An epidemic of narcotics is making thugs more aggressive and life more perilous, reports Peter Beaumont in Baghdad
Sunday September 14, 2003
The Observer
Zala and his friends live in the gardens of Baghdad. They hang around the banks of the Tigris to beg and steal. Last week Ala and his friends fished a bloated corpse out of the river and handed it to the police, hoping to get some money. Mainly, though, Ala and his gang do drugs.
When I meet them one morning at 10am they already stink of 'tannar' - the paint thinners and glue that they sniff in bags. A small medicine bottle costs 1,000 dinars (60p). The only girl in Ala's gang, a skinny, filthy child probably in her early teens, is clasping a full bottle. What they really like, when they can get it, is 'capsils'. They list the pills you can buy on the streets, especially by the Babb al Sharq, the Eastern Gate: 'pinks' and 'Lebanese', 'eyebrows' and 'crosses', 'reds' and 'Syrians'. Most of all, what these children like is a drug they call Artane, Baghdad's most popular intoxicant.
Its proper name is benzhexol. It is an anticolinergic, used in the treatment of Parkinson's disease and to counter the effect of anti-psychotic treatments. A sheet purchased from a private pharmacy will cost 1,000 dinars. For street kids like Ala, who buy them individually from the drug dealers, it costs a little more.
Taken in large doses, and dissolved in alcohol to speed the effect, Artane causes symptoms of euphoria, impulsive behaviour, easy provocation - and sometimes vivid hallucinations. Most importantly of all for the car-jackers, gunmen, bandits and muggers of Iraq, it removes your sense of fear.
Ala is about 20 years old and leads a gang of 10- to 15-year-olds. He was released from Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison under Saddam Hussein's general amnesty of prisoners. I ask him what he likes about Artane. His eyes spaced and filmy, Ala replies: 'It makes you feel more brave. It makes you want to attack people. It makes you more aggressive.'
And it is this drug that is fuelling a city-wide crime wave. Eighty per cent of criminals being picked up by the fledgling Iraqi Police Service, according to senior policemen, appear to be under the influence of drugs. In Baghdad, referrals to the city's clinic for drug abuses have doubled in the last few months. Artane is Baghdad's favourite drug.
Ala and his friends - in the local patois - are 'capsilun': the capsule people, part of a drug culture that, in Iraq, has its very roots in violent criminality.
Their drugs of choice - Artane, valium and other hypnotics, and powerful anti-epileptics like clonazepam - were the drugs of choice in Abu Ghraib prison, smuggled in by families or sold to inmates by corrupt doctors.
With the release of between 40,000 and 75,000 convicted prisoners before the US invasion, a whole prison-based drug culture has suddenly swamped the capital's streets. The Dutch courage supplied to these young gangsters by Artane is marked in a monthly body count of almost 400 shooting victims in Baghdad alone.
At the Karrada police station Lt Col Thamir Sadoun Ali, a wiry officer with greying hair, is in charge of 200 or so policemen on the front line of Baghdad's Artane-fuelled crime war. Ten of his men have died since President George Bush declared the conflict was over.
He is puzzled and disturbed by a phenomenon that is new to his experience of policing. 'Six years ago the drug problem was very limited. But then with the pre-war pardon of criminals by Saddam Hussein, suddenly it became a major problem.
'It used to be the case that criminals here were heavy users of alcohol. Once they had been sent to jail they couldn't get it.
'What they had access to instead was drugs like Artane and valium given to them either by visiting family members or corrupt officials. Now those same criminals are on the streets and using those drugs.'
According to Thamir, 80 per cent of the suspects arrested show signs of narcotic intoxication. Indeed the problem of drug-inspired crime, admits General Jafar abdil Rassol al Adili, deputy chief of police, has led to the Ministry of Justice establishing Iraq's first serious anti-drugs units as part of the effort to reduce all types of crime.
The impact of drugs on Iraq's well-documented crime problems, especially in Baghdad, has been noted with alarm too by the international advisers brought in to help Iraq's new Ministries and police service. Among those concerned by the impact of the 'capsilun' on criminality in Baghdad is deputy chief constable Douglas Brand, an officer with the South Yorkshire police who served for 23 years in the Metropolitan police: 'These drugs seem to embolden people to do crimes and they have no sense of what they are doing.'
What worries him most is the 'impactive nature' of Iraq's new criminal drug culture on a society that has, thus far, been largely shielded from a drug culture.
'What worries us,' he said, 'is the risk of a second-phase drug abuse problem that draws in wider Iraqi society and sets up its own economic dynamic.' Already, Brand said, specialist drug intelligence officers had been drafted in, and advisers were grappling to get the capsilun off Baghdad's streets.
'We are looking with the Ministry of Justice at whether we can legally negate Saddam's pardons that put these people on the streets. Failing that we are examining the possibility that those pardons could be regarded as some kind of parole and that a new offence would mean we could send these people back to finish their first sentences.'
The capsilun are not only a major problem for the police. They are a big challenge too for Iraq's almost non-existent psychiatric care and social services. With only 12 psychiatrists in Baghdad and 90 in the country - and only four clinical psychologists serving 27 million people - the wave of drug abuse and addiction, in a country trying to recover from war, is an unbearable imposition.
Dr Hashim al Zainy is director of the Ibn Rushd psychiatric hospital in Baghdad, in the front line. 'Two months ago a person arrived and asked me for Artane,' Dr al Zainy said. 'While I examined him he told me he was a murderer who was two weeks from execution when he was released under Saddam's pardon. I did not diagnose a psychotic disorder, but when I refused to prescribe Artane he pulled a gun on me. I said I would fetch some and called some US soldiers.'
One of his patients, Hassan, a recovering addict, former policeman and convicted murderer, agreed to talk to The Observer .
'I could not kill someone unless I took a pill,' he said.
Sunday September 14, 2003
The Observer
Zala and his friends live in the gardens of Baghdad. They hang around the banks of the Tigris to beg and steal. Last week Ala and his friends fished a bloated corpse out of the river and handed it to the police, hoping to get some money. Mainly, though, Ala and his gang do drugs.
When I meet them one morning at 10am they already stink of 'tannar' - the paint thinners and glue that they sniff in bags. A small medicine bottle costs 1,000 dinars (60p). The only girl in Ala's gang, a skinny, filthy child probably in her early teens, is clasping a full bottle. What they really like, when they can get it, is 'capsils'. They list the pills you can buy on the streets, especially by the Babb al Sharq, the Eastern Gate: 'pinks' and 'Lebanese', 'eyebrows' and 'crosses', 'reds' and 'Syrians'. Most of all, what these children like is a drug they call Artane, Baghdad's most popular intoxicant.
Its proper name is benzhexol. It is an anticolinergic, used in the treatment of Parkinson's disease and to counter the effect of anti-psychotic treatments. A sheet purchased from a private pharmacy will cost 1,000 dinars. For street kids like Ala, who buy them individually from the drug dealers, it costs a little more.
Taken in large doses, and dissolved in alcohol to speed the effect, Artane causes symptoms of euphoria, impulsive behaviour, easy provocation - and sometimes vivid hallucinations. Most importantly of all for the car-jackers, gunmen, bandits and muggers of Iraq, it removes your sense of fear.
Ala is about 20 years old and leads a gang of 10- to 15-year-olds. He was released from Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison under Saddam Hussein's general amnesty of prisoners. I ask him what he likes about Artane. His eyes spaced and filmy, Ala replies: 'It makes you feel more brave. It makes you want to attack people. It makes you more aggressive.'
And it is this drug that is fuelling a city-wide crime wave. Eighty per cent of criminals being picked up by the fledgling Iraqi Police Service, according to senior policemen, appear to be under the influence of drugs. In Baghdad, referrals to the city's clinic for drug abuses have doubled in the last few months. Artane is Baghdad's favourite drug.
Ala and his friends - in the local patois - are 'capsilun': the capsule people, part of a drug culture that, in Iraq, has its very roots in violent criminality.
Their drugs of choice - Artane, valium and other hypnotics, and powerful anti-epileptics like clonazepam - were the drugs of choice in Abu Ghraib prison, smuggled in by families or sold to inmates by corrupt doctors.
With the release of between 40,000 and 75,000 convicted prisoners before the US invasion, a whole prison-based drug culture has suddenly swamped the capital's streets. The Dutch courage supplied to these young gangsters by Artane is marked in a monthly body count of almost 400 shooting victims in Baghdad alone.
At the Karrada police station Lt Col Thamir Sadoun Ali, a wiry officer with greying hair, is in charge of 200 or so policemen on the front line of Baghdad's Artane-fuelled crime war. Ten of his men have died since President George Bush declared the conflict was over.
He is puzzled and disturbed by a phenomenon that is new to his experience of policing. 'Six years ago the drug problem was very limited. But then with the pre-war pardon of criminals by Saddam Hussein, suddenly it became a major problem.
'It used to be the case that criminals here were heavy users of alcohol. Once they had been sent to jail they couldn't get it.
'What they had access to instead was drugs like Artane and valium given to them either by visiting family members or corrupt officials. Now those same criminals are on the streets and using those drugs.'
According to Thamir, 80 per cent of the suspects arrested show signs of narcotic intoxication. Indeed the problem of drug-inspired crime, admits General Jafar abdil Rassol al Adili, deputy chief of police, has led to the Ministry of Justice establishing Iraq's first serious anti-drugs units as part of the effort to reduce all types of crime.
The impact of drugs on Iraq's well-documented crime problems, especially in Baghdad, has been noted with alarm too by the international advisers brought in to help Iraq's new Ministries and police service. Among those concerned by the impact of the 'capsilun' on criminality in Baghdad is deputy chief constable Douglas Brand, an officer with the South Yorkshire police who served for 23 years in the Metropolitan police: 'These drugs seem to embolden people to do crimes and they have no sense of what they are doing.'
What worries him most is the 'impactive nature' of Iraq's new criminal drug culture on a society that has, thus far, been largely shielded from a drug culture.
'What worries us,' he said, 'is the risk of a second-phase drug abuse problem that draws in wider Iraqi society and sets up its own economic dynamic.' Already, Brand said, specialist drug intelligence officers had been drafted in, and advisers were grappling to get the capsilun off Baghdad's streets.
'We are looking with the Ministry of Justice at whether we can legally negate Saddam's pardons that put these people on the streets. Failing that we are examining the possibility that those pardons could be regarded as some kind of parole and that a new offence would mean we could send these people back to finish their first sentences.'
The capsilun are not only a major problem for the police. They are a big challenge too for Iraq's almost non-existent psychiatric care and social services. With only 12 psychiatrists in Baghdad and 90 in the country - and only four clinical psychologists serving 27 million people - the wave of drug abuse and addiction, in a country trying to recover from war, is an unbearable imposition.
Dr Hashim al Zainy is director of the Ibn Rushd psychiatric hospital in Baghdad, in the front line. 'Two months ago a person arrived and asked me for Artane,' Dr al Zainy said. 'While I examined him he told me he was a murderer who was two weeks from execution when he was released under Saddam's pardon. I did not diagnose a psychotic disorder, but when I refused to prescribe Artane he pulled a gun on me. I said I would fetch some and called some US soldiers.'
One of his patients, Hassan, a recovering addict, former policeman and convicted murderer, agreed to talk to The Observer .
'I could not kill someone unless I took a pill,' he said.
