A drug-sniffing dog, donated by the French government, is used to search a truck by Anti-Narcotics Police at Shahid Sherofat checkpoint near Esfahan, Iran, while a bus passes in the background. Approximately 15,000 cars and trucks pass the checkpoint in central Iran every day. Approximately 500 of them are inspected, using transportation documents for trucks, drug-sniffing dogs, and often gut instinct to choose which cars and people to inspect further. Statistics from the United Nations show that Iran confiscates 85 percent of the opiates intercepted in the world, making Iran a critical link in the drug trade to interrupt. December 2002
Shanaz (not her real name), 32, exhales after smoking opium in her bedroom in an upper-class neighborhood of Tehran where she says she knows many people who smoke opium. Shanaz has been addicted since five years ago when she went through a divorce and a difficult depression. She has been trying to quit for some time and recently started the 14-step program at the Aftab Society in Tehran, which helps drug addicts become clean over a period of months. Her three children are aware of her drug use and efforts to stop, and she does not hide her opium smoking from them. December 2002
Reza, 38, right, prepares his heroin with a spoon over a small fire. Mohsen, 32, left, addicted to heroin for two years, struggles to light a cigarette as he falls into a heroin daze after shooting up in his hand. December 2002
A heroin addict in the Tupkhaneh neighborhood of Tehran shoots up in a back alley on a national religious holiday commemorating the death of the first imam, Ali, in 661 AD. November 2002
The commonly accepted Western narrative about Iran is that it is part of the “Axis of Evil,” a society in which women are oppressed and the nation is bursting with extremist Muslims. This is, of course, an oversimplification that misrepresents reality. As journalists, we know the importance of adding flesh to these bare-boned narratives by asking questions, observing and then rebuilding the story with the complexity that any true narrative demands.
In this spirit I traveled to Iran during the winter of 2002 to try to learn how a nation, ruled by Islamic law but also a global thoroughfare in opiate trafficking—that also interdicts 85 percent of globally seized opiates—deals with its own drug addiction problems. The dramatic rise in opiate use, its destructive effects on Iranian families, and the spread of AIDS has caught the attention of the Iranian government, which was making concerted efforts to control the heroin trade that flows from Afghanistan into Iran and on to Turkey.
The photographs on these pages, published for the first time, speak to what I witnessed. What I found in Iran is a society yearning for stability and people hungry for economic security. But I also came across people—from all social levels—who have fallen into drug use and destitution, just as one could find in nearly any other country.
While Iran is a difficult place for Western journalists to work, I believe we need to try to go there and live out our responsibility to do the work that reveals the complex fabric of a nation—even when our government considers the country to be our enemy.
Photos by Molly Bingham/WorldPictureNews. Bingham is a 2005 Nieman Fellow.