Region

KUWAIT CITY — As the blazing summer sun beats down on Kuwait, shoppers stroll down a promenade lined with palm trees and European-style boutiques, all without breaking a sweat.

In one of the world's hottest desert countries, it's all made possible by architecture and technology: the entire street is located inside the heavily air-conditioned Kuwait City shopping mall.

Outside, where temperatures now often soar around 50°C, barely anyone is moving around on foot, leaving the historic market largely deserted.

"Only a few people stay in Kuwait at this time of year," said date merchant Abdullah Ashkanani, 53, as large fans sprayed cooling mist onto the few customers braving the blistering heat.

Ashkanani, who hails from Iran, said he keeps his shop open largely "for appearances" during the hottest months when most of Kuwait's four million residents flee abroad.

For those who stay behind in the tiny oil-rich country, life is made bearable by the ever-present Arctic blast of air-con systems.

“We can put up with it because the house, the car, everything is air-conditioned,” said pensioner Abou Mohammad, dressed in a white robe and keffiyeh and sitting in a comfortably cooled cafe.

The irony is not lost on him that such energy-guzzling systems produce the carbon emissions that are heating up the planet, especially the sweltering Gulf region, a climate hotspot.

Such excessive energy consumption, said Mohammad, has “brought this heat to Kuwait”.

Heating up  

Kuwait is home to seven percent of the world’s crude reserves — energy wealth that has long afforded many of its people a luxury lifestyle.

An extremely water-scarce country, it also relies heavily on fossil fuels to power seawater desalination plants.

Like Saudi Arabia and Qatar, Kuwait is one of the world’s leading emitters per capita of CO2, a key driver of global warming.

Kuwait has always been hot, its dry summers fanned by the northwesterly shamal wind that also blows over Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

Temperatures in Mitribah, a remote area in northwest Kuwait, often soar past 50°C, making it one of the hottest places on Earth after Death Valley in eastern California.

But in recent years, climate change has made summer peaks hotter and longer, said meteorologist Essa Ramadan, as periods of extreme heat have gone “from two weeks to about a month”.

The number of days per year that see temperatures rise above 50°C have more than tripled since the turn of the century, noted the meteorologist.

As the world records ever more heat records, “what is happening to us will happen elsewhere”, he warned.

Grassroots 

Kuwait, where glass towers soar into the sky and cars choke the highways, has only recently invested in public transport and green energy to help counter climate change.

Its environment protection authority, which falls under the oil ministry, recognises “a rise in temperatures in recent years”, its director Samira Al Kandari said.

To help change course, Kuwait has started building its first commercial solar power park, the Shagaya project.

With the first phase complete, and other projects planned, Kandari said Kuwait’s goal is that “renewable energy constitutes 15 percent of our energy production by 2035”.

“We will increase this percentage in the future,” she said.

Outside of the state institutions, some Kuwaiti citizens have launched grassroot initiatives, including tree-planting to help cool sun-baked urban environments.

Essa Al Essa, a 46-year-old dentist, started planting trees as a “hobby” in a vacant, sandy lot near his home on the outskirts of the capital, he told AFP.

In 2020, at the height of the Covid pandemic, he developed it into the Kuwait Forest project, starting a green space that also helps scrub the air and captures carbon.

“Trees are particularly useful in polluted places such as industrial and residential areas,” said Essa.

But he also hopes the natural shade and cooling they provide will help break the dominance of energy-intensive air-conditioning.

“The more we cool our houses”, Essa said, “the more we warm our surroundings”.

WAD MADANI, Sudan — Desperate to check on her elderly mother amid the chaos of Sudan’s war, Amal Hassan left her family home in the capital Khartoum on May 30.

She has yet to return.

Her husband and three children in Omdurman — part of greater Khartoum — are among the hundreds of Sudanese families desperate for news of loved ones who have disappeared.

At least 3,900 people have been killed since war broke out in mid-April between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

Hundreds more have simply vanished, leaving their families anxiously guessing whether they have died in the fighting or been abducted by combatants.

Many anxious families have turned to social media, desperate for news of missing relatives, in many cases girls and women, in the war that has seen repeated reports of sexual violence.

The online support project Mafqoud (Missing) lists the names of the disappeared together with their photos and a family member’s phone number.

Just one of the many listed is Saba Baloula Mokhtar, a 17-year-old girl who was last seen in Omdurman on May 18.

Human rights groups and Sudan-based activists say many have been taken by the RSF.

One woman who made it back to her family in north Khartoum, Heba Ebeid, said paramilitaries held her for three months, forcing her and other women and girls to cook for them.

Some of the missing are feared to have died in gun battles, artillery and air strikes in the war between army chief Abdel Fattah Al Burhan and RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.

Others have been kidnapped, sometimes for ransom of up to 30 million Sudanese pounds (around $54,545), according to a report by the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa (SIHA).

A relatively lucky few have been freed, sometimes left by the side of the road after days, weeks or months of captivity.

Invisible victims 

The Sudanese Association for Victims of Forced Disappearance said it had filed “reports of 430 disappearances during the war”.

It has given the names of missing men, women and children to police stations in Wad Madani, a town 200 kilometres  south of Khartoum where many of the displaced have fled.

“According to survivors, these abductions are the work of the RSF,” Othman Al Basri, a lawyer with the association, told AFP.

SIHA has also collected testimonies from women who say they were kidnapped by paramilitaries and forced to cook for them or wash their clothes.

“We have so far counted 31 missing women and girls,” the group told AFP in a written statement.

“But we think the real number is much, much higher. Families avoid reporting cases of missing women, for fear of stigma.”

In the back of everyone’s mind is the same fear: That the disappeared have been subjected to the sexual violence that has been rampant in both the current and past Sudanese conflicts.

Since April 15, the governmental Combatting Violence against Women and Children Unit has recorded 108 sexual assaults in Khartoum and the western region of Darfur.

The unit stresses that the true number, like overall casualty figures, may be far higher, as their count includes only those who have received treatment and chosen to report the assaults.

Many more are thought to be suffering at home in silence.

Dead or alive? 

Most Sudanese hospitals are out of service, and police have mostly disappeared from the streets as their stations have been attacked and looted by the RSF.

Families have turned to resistance committees, the neighbourhood groups that used to organise pro-democracy demonstrations and which now provide assistance.

Sometimes they help dig out survivors from the rubble of bombed buildings, at other times activists have stood up to RSF fighters wo have been accused of terrorising neighbourhoods and looting property.

On July 3, civilians successfully stopped two young women from being abducted by RSF fighters, the Al Halfaya committee in Khartoum said.

In other cases, relatives and neighbours secured the release of four girls abducted in three separate incidents, the committee said.

Far from the capital, women and girls have also been reported missing in Darfur and the states of Sennar and White Nile.

“My daughter Najwa Mohammed Adam is 16 years old — we haven’t heard from her in 45 days,” said Halima Haroun, speaking to AFP from Chad after fleeing the West Darfur capital of El Geneina.

“We don’t know anything about her, if she’s dead or alive.”

A paramilitary source, speaking on condition of anonymity, denied accusations of abductions, saying “the RSF is not holding anyone.”

The source added that the RSF “is only holding one person, and that is because he is accused of a crime”.

AL-'ASSAH, Libya — In the unbearable midday heat, a Libyan patrol near the border with Tunisia comes across a black African man collapsed on the reddish-brown desert sand.

He is barely breathing, and officers try to revive him, gently, with a few drops of water on his lips.

The man is just one among hundreds of migrants arriving daily in Libya after being abandoned in the desert borderland by Tunisian security forces, according to Libyan border guards and the migrants themselves.

By the time they reach Libya, the migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa are ready to drop from exhaustion, in temperatures that have exceeded 40°C.

AFP on Sunday witnessed the border guards rescue around 100 men and women from an uninhabited zone near Sebkhat Al Magta, a salt lake along the Libya-Tunisia border.

In the distant shimmering heat haze, six figures emerge, the latest to reach the area. They speak Arabic and say they have come from Tunisia.

Libyan border guards told AFP that, over the past two weeks, they have rescued hundreds of migrants who said they were left by Tunisian authorities in the border region near Al Assah, about 150 kilometres west of Tripoli.

In early July, hundreds of migrants from Sub-Saharan African countries were driven out of the Tunisian port city of Sfax as racial tensions flared following the death of a Tunisian man in a clash between locals and migrants.

Tunisians 'brought 

me here' 

Haitham Yahiya, from Sudan, said he worked for a year in Tunisia's construction sector after reaching the country clandestinely through Niger and Algeria.

"I was at work when they caught me and brought me here, first in a police car then in a [security forces] truck. Then they left me and told me to go to Libya," he said in Al-Assah.

At its closest point, near Sfax, Tunisia is only about 130 kilometres from the Italian island of Lampedusa. 

The North African country is a major gateway for migrants and asylum-seekers attempting perilous sea voyages in hopes of a better life in Europe, whose leaders have offered financial aid to help Tunisia manage the flow.

Human Rights Watch said up to 1,200 black Africans were "expelled, or forcibly transferred by Tunisian security forces" in July to the country's desert border regions with Libya and Algeria.

In mid-July, the Tunisian Red Crescent said it had provided shelter to at least 630 migrants who had been taken after July 3 to Ras Jedir, about 40 kilometres north of Al Assah.

A few days later, though, AFP gathered testimony from hundreds of migrants still stuck in the Ras Jedir buffer zone. They said they had been forced there by Tunisian security forces.

In Ras Jedir, 350 people remained in a makeshift camp, including 65 children and 12 pregnant women.

"Their living conditions are very problematic," a humanitarian official told AFP, adding that "it is not sustainable in the long term, there are no toilets, no water tanks, no real shelters".

At Al Assah, dazed migrants continue to stagger in, some with only sandals on their feet.

In twos and threes or by the dozens, they come. Some collapse. The guards hold bottles of water over their parched mouths.

Faced with the influx, Libyans from the border guards Battalion 19 of the army, and a unit against Saharan immigration, have been patrolling daily.

"We are on the demarcation line between Libya and Tunisia and we see more and more migrants arriving every day," said Ali Wali, Battalion 19 spokesman.

He said AFP received permission to accompany the units "to silence those [in Tunisia] who claim that we fabricated it all and brought the migrants here".

Their patrol area covers 15 kilometres around Al Assah. Wali said that depending on the day, they might find "150, 200, 350, sometimes as many as 400 or 500 irregular migrants".

On this day there are 110, two of them women. There are supposed to be two others. A soldier searches for them through his binoculars.

At least 17 dead 

On Thursday, a joint statement from United Nations agencies referred to the "unfolding tragedy" of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers in Tunisia's border regions.

"They are stuck in the desert, facing extreme heat, and without access to shelter, food or water. There is an urgent need to provide critical, life-saving humanitarian assistance while urgent, humane solutions are found," they said.

The UN has also singled out Libya in several reports in the past, denouncing violence against the 600,000 migrants it detains, most of them in camps.

The government of Tripoli has made it known in recent days that it rejects "resettlement" on its territory of migrants arriving from Tunisia.

The migrants, meanwhile, have crossed the border unknowingly. They walk, they said, in the direction that the Tunisian security forces told them to go — towards Libya.

As a heatwave has suffocated the Mediterranean, some like Alexander Unche Okole said they had walked for two days, without food or water.

Okole, 41, from Nigeria, said he entered Tunisia via Debdeb in Algeria, and "spent some time in Tunis but then the Tunisian police got me. They arrested me in the street and then took me down to the Sahara desert".

He showed a mobile phone whose screen was smashed, he said, by the Tunisians.

"With the Grace of God, the Libyans rescued me" and provided food and water, Okole said.

He survived but others have not.

Wali said officers found two bodies on Saturday, a couple of days after recovering five more including a woman and her baby. They had also discovered five corpses a week earlier, he said.

"How do you expect them to survive? The heat, no water, and a march of two, three days?" Wali asked.

Humanitarian groups in Libya reached by AFP gave a death toll of at least 17 over the past three weeks.

DUBAI — The United Arab Emirates said on Tuesday it would allow environmental activists to “assemble peacefully” at this year’s UN climate talks, despite a prohibition on unauthorised protests in the Gulf state.

The oil-rich UAE, set to host COP28 from November to December in the business hub of Dubai, requires official permission for protests but effectively bans demonstrations it deems disruptive.

At the upcoming UN climate talks “there will be space available for climate activists to assemble peacefully and make their voices heard”, it said.

The announcement was made in a joint statement with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) released on Tuesday and published by the UAE’s official WAM news agency.

The statement was released after COP28 President Sultan Al Jaber and UNFCCC chief Simon Stiell signed a bilateral agreement in Abu Dhabi that provides the legal basis for organising and hosting the climate talks.

“We are firmly committed to ensuring that UN values are upheld at COPs,” the statement quoted Stiell as saying.

Tuesday’s announcement was welcomed by campaign group Climate Action Network International which commended “the COP28 Presidency for their dedicated efforts towards fostering an inclusive climate summit”.

But it warned that it would “resist any attempts to curtail [civil society] participation”, according to Harjeet Singh, its head of global political strategy.

“Our unwavering conviction is clear: there can be no climate justice without human rights,” Singh told AFP.

‘Rights record’ 

The UAE is a major oil producer and one of the world’s largest emitters of CO2 per capita.

The choice for it to host COP28 has sparked criticism from environmental groups which warn that the involvement of a major oil exporter could slow progress in the fight against global warming.

Non-government groups including Human Rights Watch have also warned that the Gulf state’s restrictions on freedom of expression could hinder the meaningful participation of climate activists.

“Civil society actors will struggle to effectively play their role in pushing for ambitious action to address the climate crisis in a country whose government has such an abysmal human rights record,” HRW warned in a March report.

Large protests have been common at most previous COPs, and limited rallies were allowed at the last UN climate talks in Egypt, where authorities regularly crack down on demonstrations and detain activists.

The COP27 Egypt host faced criticism over restrictions that made for a tight protest space, where activists had to request accreditation 36 hours in advance, and provide detailed information on the organisers and on the protest.

Approved demonstrations were allowed only during certain hours, and in a specific purpose-built area that saw a heavy security presence.

It was a far cry from COP26 in Glasgow, where tens of thousands of demonstrators from all over the world marched to demand “climate justice”.

SIDON, Lebanon — Three days of fighting in south Lebanon's Ain Al Helweh Palestinian refugee camp have left at least 11 dead and dozens wounded, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said on Monday.

Clashes broke out over the weekend between members of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' secular Fateh movement and Islamists based in the camp, Lebanon's largest located in the coastal city of Sidon.

Renewed gunfire and shelling on Monday shook the camp, said an AFP correspondent in Sidon, sending frightened residents fleeing.

"According to reports, 11 were killed and another 40 were injured, including one staff member" of UNRWA, said Dorothee Klaus, the UN agency's director in Lebanon.

She added in a statement that UNRWA has "temporarily suspended" operations in the camp due to the fighting.

Palestinian factions said they had agreed on a truce on Sunday but it did not hold, with fighting continuing with automatic weapons and rocket fire.

Officials said five Fateh members and one Islamist had been killed in the initial violence over the weekend.

There was no immediate word on the identities of the other fatalities.

“UNRWA urgently calls on all parties to immediately return to calm and take all measures necessary to protect civilians, including children,” Klaus said.

The statement noted that “two UNRWA schools have sustained damaged” and more than 2,000 Ain Al Helweh residents had been forced to flee.

An AFP correspondent on Monday morning saw dozens of people, mostly women and children, leaving the camp carrying light luggage, while others took refuge in a nearby mosque.

Shells also fell outside the camp, AFP journalists said, with a nearby hospital evacuating patients and shops in Sidon closing fearing further escalation.

By long-standing convention, the Lebanese army does not enter Palestinian refugee camps in the country, now bustling but impoverished urban districts, leaving the factions themselves to handle security.

“We fled from the scene of the fighting, shells are raining in the streets,” a 75-year-old woman told AFP, requesting anonymity for security concerns.

She said armed factions were carrying weapons “to fight Israel, not to fight each other and become displaced”.

Ain Al Helweh, now home to more than 54,000 registered refugees, was created for Palestinians who were driven out or fled during the 1948 war that coincided with Israel’s creation.

In recent years, they have been joined by thousands of Palestinians who had been living in Syria and fled the war there.

Palestinian armed groups in Lebanon rarely confront Israel nowadays, but fighting between rival factions is common in Ain Al Helweh.

The latest violence began late Saturday, killing an Islamist and injuring six others, a Palestinian source inside the camp had told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

The next day, a Fateh military leader and four of his colleagues were killed during a “heinous operation”, the group said.

Tiny Lebanon hosts an estimated 250,000 Palestinian refugees, according to UNRWA.

Most Palestinians, including more than 30,000 who fled the war in neighbouring Syria after 2011, live in one of Lebanon’s 12 official camps, and face a variety of legal restrictions, including on employment.

RIYADH — Saudi Arabia has approved a $1.2 billion grant to Yemen's internationally recognised government, two officials told AFP on Tuesday, the latest attempt to prop up the war-scarred country's flagging economy. 

Yemen's finance minister and central bank governor as well as the Saudi ambassador were expected to disclose details of the grant at a signing ceremony in Riyadh at 5:00pm (14:00 GMT), said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to confirm the amount. 

Since 2015, Riyadh has led an international coalition backing the Aden-based government in its war against Houthi rebels, who seized the capital Sanaa in 2014.

Fighting has dropped off sharply since a UN-brokered truce took effect in April last year, even though it lapsed in October. 

However more than two-thirds of Yemenis depend on aid to survive amid a grinding economic crisis marked by a collapsed currency and import bans. 

The UN special envoy for Yemen, Hans Grundberg, said in June that "economic warfare" between the opposing parties had compounded the country's problems. 

At the end of last year, Huthi drone attacks on government-run oil terminals halted hydrocarbon exports, the main source of income for the Saudi-backed government, which is headed by an eight-member Presidential Leadership Council unveiled in Riyadh shortly after the truce began. 

The government has struggled to finance basic services and pay the salaries of civil servants. 

The Saudi Development and Reconstruction Programme for Yemen has touted Riyadh's efforts to ease Yemen's economic woes, including a $1 billion deposit in the central bank earlier this year, a $600 million oil derivatives fund and $400 million for development projects such as housing and hospitals. 

A surprise rapprochement deal announced in March between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which backs the Houthis, raised hopes for a durable ceasefire in Yemen. 

The following month, Saudi ambassador Mohammed Al Jaber travelled to Sanaa for talks with Houthi officials.

Those meetings ended without a new agreement, though Jaber told AFP in May he believed all parties were "serious" about wanting peace.

SIDON, Lebanon — Clashes in south Lebanon's Ain Al Helweh Palestinian refugee camp killed at least two people on Monday, medics told AFP, bringing the death toll to eight since fighting erupted over the weekend.

Renewed gunfire and shelling on Monday shook the camp, said an AFP correspondent in the coastal city of Sidon, sending frightened residents fleeing after three days of violence.

The clashes over the weekend had killed five members of Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas's secular Fateh movement and one Islamist fighter, officials said.

Physician Riad Abu Al Enein, who heads Al Hamshari Hospital in Sidon near the camp, told AFP that a 31-year-old man died Monday from his injuries while undergoing surgery.

At another Sidon hospital, Raee, nurse Norma Mohsen said that "today we received one dead person and six wounded" from the camp, the site of frequent clashes between rival factions.

Al Hamshari was treating 13 others wounded in Ain Al Helewh, including a patient in critical condition, said Abu Al Enein.

Palestinian factions said they had agreed on a truce on Sunday but it did not hold.

Dozens of residents, mostly women and children, have fled the camp carrying light luggage, while others took refuge in a nearby mosque, the AFP correspondent said.

By long-standing convention, the Lebanese army does not enter Palestinian refugee camps in the country — now bustling but impoverished urban districts — leaving the factions themselves to handle security.

"We fled from the scene of the fighting, shells are raining in the streets," a 75-year-old woman told AFP, requesting anonymity for security concerns.

'Heinous operation' 

She said armed factions were carrying weapons "to fight Israel, not to fight each other and become displaced".

Ain Al Helweh, now home to more than 54,000 registered refugees, was created for Palestinians who were driven out or fled during the 1948 war that coincided with Israel's creation.

In recent years, they have been joined by thousands of Palestinians who had been living in Syria and fled the war there.

Palestinian armed groups in Lebanon rarely confront Israel nowadays, but fighting between rival factions is common in Ain Al Helweh, Lebanon’s largest Palestinian refugee camp.

The latest violence began late Saturday, killing an Islamist and injuring six others, a Palestinian source inside the camp had told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

The next day, a Fateh military leader and four of his colleagues were killed during a “heinous operation”, the group said.

Shells also fell outside the camp, AFP journalists said, with a nearby hospital evacuating patients and shops in Sidon closing fearing further escalation.

Tiny Lebanon hosts an estimated 250,000 Palestinian refugees, according to UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.

Most Palestinians, including more than 30,000 who fled the war in neighbouring Syria after 2011, live in one of Lebanon’s 12 official camps, and face a variety of legal restrictions, including on employment.

BAGHDAD — Mohammed has been taking nearly a dozen captagon pills daily for seven years. Now, as Iraq grapples with a major drug crisis, the 23-year-old hopes for a fresh start.

Iraq, which borders with Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia, has long been a transit country for the region’s ballooning trade in the amphetamine-type drug and other narcotics.

But in recent years, Iraq itself has witnesses a dramatic spike in drug abuse, prompting authorities to search for answers, both by cracking down on traffickers and by providing help to addicts.

Methamphetamine, or crystal meth, originating in Afghanistan or Iran, is among the most common drugs in Iraq today, alongside captagon, which is produced on an industrial scale in Syria and trafficked via Iraq to Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich Gulf states where it has gained notorious popularity.

Mohammed, who asked to use a pseudonym, is one of about 40 patients being treated at a rehabilitation clinic which the Iraqi health ministry opened in the capital Baghdad in April.

The young man, from the western Al Anbar province on the border with Syria, told AFP he had been introduced to captagon, also known as “zero-one”, by his work colleagues at a food store.

“It makes you active, gives you energy and keeps you awake,” he said of the drug.

Since age 16, Mohammed would take “10 to 12” captagon pills a day, he confessed. Selling for the equivalent of $2 apiece, the stimulant “is everywhere”.

Like the other patients at Al Canal Centre for Social Rehabilitation, he came to the clinic on his own initiative.

After an initial two-week stay, he returned home, but then quickly headed back to the clinic, fearing a relapse.

Captagon, Mohammed said, “leads you either to prison or to death”.

‘Plague’ 

Around him, in the laid-back atmosphere of the rehab centre gym, men of nearly all ages were playing table tennis and foosball, some of them smiling. Others were visibly tired or had blank expressions on their faces.

Patients usually stay for around one month at the facility, which also includes a women’s wing and offers psychological support. Once discharged, they return for weekly check-ups for a period of six months.

“We host all ages. It starts at 14-15, but most are in their 20s,” said the clinic’s director, Abdel Karim Sadeq Karim.

The most common substance abuse the facility treats is crystal meth. “From the very first dose, there’s addiction,” said Karim.

His deputy, Ali Abdullah, called it “a plague that totally destroys individuals”, noting a hike in drug consumption in Iraq since 2016.

Iraqi security forces now announce near-daily drug busts and arrests, in operations supported by intelligence and cooperation with neighbouring countries.

Hussein Al Tamimi, spokesman for Iraq’s narcotics directorate, told AFP that authorities had detained more than 10,000 suspects between October and June for “crimes related to narcotics — traffickers, resellers or consumers”.

According to the government agency, security forces also seized 10 million captagon pills and 500 kilogrammes  of other drugs including at least 385 kilogrammes of crystal meth.

A regional meeting hosted by Baghdad in May saw “the creation of a shared database” to exchange information between authorities across borders, said Tamimi.

That meeting also led to “the establishment of weekly contacts between our services and the competent services of Arab states” and of other countries in the region, he added.

Market transformation 

According to an AFP tally based on official records, at least 110 million captagon pills have been seized across the Middle East this year.

In mid-July, Iraq’s interior ministry announced the discovery of a rare captagon manufacturing lab in the country’s south.

It was the first such announcement in a country where drug production remains virtually nonexistent.

A Western diplomat stationed in Baghdad told AFP that Iraq’s emerging importance for captagon trafficking may be attributed in part to a crackdown in neighbouring Jordan.

Amman has reinforced its borders in a bid to cut off trade routes via its territory and set up a forum to tackle smuggling from Syria, while Jordanian security forces often open fire at suspected drug traffickers.

Until about seven years ago, Iraq had been almost exclusively a transit country, but that has gradually changed as drugs can also replace payment for rights of passage, said the diplomat, requesting anonymity.

The domestic resale that resulted has generated local consumption and “potentially... a real market”, the diplomat added, noting the high proportion of young people among Iraq’s 43-million-strong population.

Recognising the risks, the government has opened three rehabilitation centres — in Al Anbar province, Kirkuk in the north and Najaf in central Iraq — with plans to expand the scheme to other provinces.

Their aim is to give addicts who have been arrested a place to recover, away from traffickers in prison.