The country's oil wealth - and its bored youth - are the temptation for drug traffickers, mostly from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria. Since Saudi work visas are hard to get and tourist visas nonexistent, most smugglers pose as pilgrims to Mecca, a trip required at least once of every Muslim.
Of the 440 pounds of drugs confiscated last year at Jiddah's airport, more than half was seized during Hajj - the main month of pilgrimage.
"We have found drugs hidden inside prayer beads, inside copies of the Koran (Islam's holy book), and we've found prayer rugs dipped in dried heroin paste," said a customs officer. "We arrested a Nigerian cleric for possession of drugs. Half an hour earlier, he had led us in prayers."
The most popular drug is heroin, accounting for 84 percent of narcotics seized last year, followed by hashish, cocaine and opium, customs officials said. The "mules," or carriers, typically get free trips and advances of up to $2,000, a small fortune in their impoverished countries.
Traffickers even use entire families to throw off suspicion. In January, for instance, agents arrested a family of 19 Pakistanis, including 10 women and six children between the age of 3 and 8, trying to smuggle in 10 pounds of heroin.
To halt the trade, Saudi Arabia has sophisticated urinalysis and X-ray machines and has stepped up intelligence gathering with neighboring countries.
Under the drug awareness program, so far only open to boys, high school students in traditional robes and checked red-and-white headdresses file each day into the drug agency's Riyadh office. The students are shown narcotics and drug paraphernalia and given rulers and pens with anti-drug slogans.
But al-Harithy, head of the agency, said the main message is from Islam. "At the end of the meeting, we distribute taped Islamic sermons to instill religious ideals into the boys and explain that taking drugs is against our religion," he said.
Saudi Arabia is among the most strict Islamic states. Women must cover from head to toe in black and are not allowed to drive. Movie theaters are nonexistent. Men and women cannot mingle in public.
But that means some rich Saudi youths with plenty of free time are ideal targets for pushers. Mazen - who asked that his last name not be used - began experimenting with drugs at 17 out of boredom and because his friends were doing it. Now, he's 25 and still lives with his parents in a villa ringed with palm trees in Jiddah.
He doesn't work and stays up all night cruising the streets in his black Trans Am or playing computer games or watching American movies on videotape. About twice a week, Mazen smokes heroin.
"It's only in Saudi Arabia that I do drugs," he said. "When I travel abroad there's so much to do I don't need drugs to distract me. But here, drugs are one of our few escapes
."
http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19970518&slug=2539864
Copyright (c) 1997 Seattle Times Company, All Rights Reserved.
