Road to Perdition

I am writing about a country about which what I had read and known seemed to have all changed drastically for the worse in last few years. That country is Iran. I read a shocking article about it and then later on happened to chat up with an Iranian co student at school who gave me a true, honest but very disturbing account of the nation’s state.

Iran always had extremely progressive and educated citizens in its society until recent years when it seemed to have all massively gone wrong. The situation there now is a perfect example of what happens to people whose minds are liberal but who are restricted or forced to lead a life which is not true to their souls. People get messed up and messed up big time !

Did you know about 5 million of the population in Iran are drug addicts, many of these addicts are woman who have given birth to a whole generation of crack babies and continue to do so. No wonder then that Aids is a growing problem because of contaminated needles and because of woman succumbing to flesh trade to feed their drug habits.

According to the U.N. World Drug Report for 2005, Iran has the highest proportion of opiate addicts in the world -- 2.8 percent of the population over the age of 15.

ARE YOU SURPRISED? ARE YOU SHOCKED?
I was, I am.

Naïve and ignorant me couldn’t guess the reason behind such a massive and seemingly exponentially growing drug problem in the country. The answer though was so obvious.

Most heroin sold in Europe and elsewhere comes from Afghanistan’s poppies. Drugs cross the permeable border with Iran on their way to Turkey and Europe despite Iran’s desperate efforts, costing many lives, to combat trafficking at the border. Europe doesn’t help Iran with the cost of policing, and does even less to finance Afghan farmers to plant alternative crops. On this route the drugs get leaked into the country thus giving easy access to people.

State of woman in the world, Value of human life, Pseudo social morals, World drug regulations, War against Afghanistan, Imperialism – all these issues get raised within this one example.

There are so many disturbing and unjust things happening around this world we call our own. I don’t want to sound idealistic but I honestly feel no longer is any country’s problem just its own. Specially through this revolution called ‘Globalisation’ we are more interconnected than ever before. The fact that there is a drug problem in Iran only reflects the greater realities of this problem elsewhere.

A time is due to come when ‘Globalisation’ would be truly economical, political, technological, ecological and social. A time when the whole world truly would be one big family!

Meanwhile, I feel for this pitiful state of a country with valuable natural resources, potentially intellectual citizens and a strategic geographical position. A country which gave so much to the world through its rich cultural and literary heritage. A country which gave us great Persian poetry through likes of Rumi, Omar Khayyam et al.

A country which was to be magnificent and palatial but which now is an edifice in shambles.