Iranians turn to dope to escape misery of Islamic Republic

Sunday Telegraph:

It was here in 1956 that Iran's future leader was born the son of a blacksmith, and here in 2005 that residents strung out bunting when he was elected - confident that the village's most famous son would put them foremost in his much-vaunted crusade for the poor.

But while a sign now hangs outside the village saying "Welcome to Aradan, the birthplace of the popular president," the only dreams being chased here today are through a pipe - as shown by the stench of Afghan opium smoke that lingers in the local taxi office.

Despite a triumphant visit last summer by the village's most famous son, locals say his pledges of jobs and a better standard of living have failed to materialise - with opium, heroin and other narcotics filling the gap between reality and aspiration.

"When Mr Ahmadinejad won the election we were very happy," said one of the crowd of drivers sitting idly outside the taxi office last week. "But he has not done well for us - he promised to tackle unemployment, but he hasn't. Instead, people are turning to drugs because there is nothing else for them."

That Mr Ahmadinejad's most lasting legacy for his native village may prove to be a drug habit is just one sign of how the greatest threat to his survival may not come not from his avowed enemies in Washington and Israel, but quite literally from his own back yard.

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And domestically, the climate is becoming steadily more hostile for Mr Ahmadinejad, 52, a devout Muslim who pledged to restore the puritanical values of Iran's Islamic revolution. By fulfilling his promise to put the nation's vast oil wealth "on the tables of the poor" by giving out cheap loans he has allowed inflation to skyrocket to more than 30 per cent, undoing his best intentions by sending food, fuel and housing costs soaring.

And in few places is the disillusionment felt more keenly than Aradan, a pine tree-lined farming hamlet on the cusp of a vast salt desert, where 98 per cent of residents voted for him. Mr Ahmadinejad's family moved from here to Tehran when he was still a baby, and today the ancestral mud-brick home lies derelict and full of rubbish.

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His ancestral mud-brick home is a good metaphor for Iran. It is a metaphor for the economy created by the Islamic Republic. It is ironic that the Iranians support the Taliban in Afghanistan at the same time their dope is ruining the lives of poor Iranians. Iran continues to be a transit area for the drugs that sustain the Taliban.