TEHRAN — Police forces Yazd Province have confiscated 116 kilograms of narcotics, says a provincial police commander, according to Mehr.

The police forces identified and seized the illegal cargo of narcotics in a residential area in Yazd Province, Colonel Mohammad Reza Hashemifar said on Sunday.

The cargo included 91 kg of opium and 25 kg of hashish which were seized in the operation, Hashemifar said.

Three smugglers have also been arrested, he added.

Iran, which has a 900-kilometer border with Afghanistan, has been used as the main conduit for smuggling Afghan drugs to narcotics kingpins across the world, especially Europe.

Despite high economic and human costs, the Islamic Republic has been actively fighting drug-trafficking over the past decades.

Iran has spent more than $700 million on sealing its borders and preventing the transit of narcotics destined for European, Arab and Central Asian countries.

The war on drugs has claimed the lives of nearly 4,000 Iranian police forces over the past four decades.

In late January, Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s ambassador and permanent representative to the Vienna-based international organizations, said Iran seized totally of 814,477 kilograms of different types of narcotic drugs in 2019.

Poppy cultivation started rising in Afghanistan since the U.S. invaded the country after the September 11 attacks.

Speaking at the Wilson Center in Washington, DC, in November 2018, John F. Sopko, special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, said the counternarcotics effort in Afghanistan "has just been a total failure."

MH/PA