Why are Iranian Police Failing to Fight Drug Trafficking at Sea?

Iranwire – Drug trafficking routes involving Iran have latently shifted from land to sea, with more covert shipments now being discovered in the Gulf of Oman than on land. For their part, Iranian officials have sought to shift the blame, claiming: “The imposition of regulations and blockades on the country’s eastern borders have led to drug trafficking from the sea”.

This change in Iranian drug-traffickers’ methods has taken the Iranian police somewhat by surprise, and law enforcement agencies are struggling with significant deficiencies in their ability to combat it. The issue and its root causes are the focus of an article in the latest edition of Iran’s scientific quarterly, Border Science and Technology.

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The recently-published article, entitled NAJA Intelligence Challenges in Combating Drug Trafficking at Sea, details the problems that police with the Islamic Republic of Iran Law Enforcement Force, known as NAJA, are having in curbing drug trafficking from the country.

Contrary to the repeated claims of intelligence, security, and law enforcement officials in Iran, the article’s authors state: “There is currently no such thing as a national intelligence hierarchy for in dealing with drug trafficking by sea. Inter-organizational relations are not specifically defined.” As such, they say, “friction and parallelism” hamper Iran’s ability to block drug operations.

According to Iranian law, the national police are tasked with countering drug trafficking on Iran’s maritime borders. The intelligence arm of NAJA is front and center of this effort alongside its other duties combatting both petty and high-level crimes.

The intelligence arm has three key categories of information it collects about drug trafficking: defined as those aiding “obstruction”, “identification” and “control”. The first category includes information gleaned from border units at road, coastal, air and maritime checkpoints, who in turn make use of information from provincial police stations. These units are responsible for blocking the advance of any threat from the zero point of the border into Iran itself.

The second category of information involves intelligence on local populations and the movements, affiliations and activities of people of interest.  The third deals with overall monitoring of the situation inside the country and applying controls to designated areas, both on and just outside of the country’s borders.

NAJA’s intelligence officers work closely in collaboration with the Deputy Chief of Police and other senior force members, collecting and analyzing information so as to detect and prevent crime. However, the article in Border Science and Technology took in the opinions of some 30 Iranian experts including police officers, and determined this collaboration is seriously lacking in places.

The article listed 15 weaknesses in the overall intelligence quality and operational performance of NAJA in the fight against drug trafficking at sea. One of the first was “[a] “lack of an organizational structure commensurate with the needs of intelligent surveillance.”

The report also pointed the finger at a “lack of transparency” regarding regulations in the intelligence chain of command, the “poor training of senior naval commanders” and a “lack of intelligence coherence within NAJA” as aggravating factors. Elsewhere, it found that police did not have the necessary technology for proper aerial surveillance, such as high-zoom video cameras, and were not making use of the “technical, financial and intelligence support” that other countries in the region might have to offer.

The authors noted the existence of a burgeoning drug market in Iran, and said the Sunni Muslim minority in particular was vulnerable to being recruited for drug trafficking. The study concluded that a lack of structure meant key opportunities to intercept the drug trade were being missed at sea, and called for the formation of a “coherent information network” to improve police performance in this area.