Kuwait’s Ministry of Interior has told residents and citizens — travellers above all — not to carry any bag, parcel, package or item belonging to someone else, in either direction across the border. The reason it gives is blunt: smugglers of narcotics and psychotropic substances rely on the good faith of whoever agrees.
What the ministry actually said
Smugglers use a range of methods to disguise banned material and to route it through the border posts in other people’s hands. The person carrying it is the one who answers for it. The ministry’s instruction is to refuse any request to carry something for another person, whatever the justification offered and whatever the relationship of the person handing it over.
Three cases already caught
Three travellers were stopped in separate cases on arrival in Kuwait, carrying narcotics and psychotropic substances concealed inside medicine packets.
Initial investigation found they had taken the packets from people outside Kuwait to deliver to people inside it, having been told the contents were medicine. The accused and the seized material were referred to the competent authority.
The practical rule
The sentence that carries the whole warning is that good faith does not exempt anyone from liability. Whoever carries a package whose contents they cannot vouch for faces the investigation alone, and being told it was medicine or a gift is no defence. Refusing is the only step that protects the carrier — including when the request comes from a relative or a friend.
It applies both ways: what leaves the country and what enters it.
Photo: a hall at Kuwait International Airport. By Dhaval Surana, CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
Source: Ministry of Interior, via Al-Anba, 16 September 2026.
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