The War in Afghanistan is Simply a Big Money Heroin Racket
May 1st, 2007Via: Global Research:
The United Nations has announced that opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has soared. There was a 59% increase in areas under opium cultivation in 2006. Production of opium is estimated to have increased by 49% in relation to 2005.
The Western media in chorus blame the Taliban and the warlords. Western officials are said to believe that “the trade is controlled by 25 smugglers including three government ministers.” (Guardian, op. cit).
Yet in a bitter irony, US military presence has served to restore rather than eradicate the drug trade. Opium production has increased 33 fold from 185 tons in 2001 under the Taliban to 6100 tons in 2006. Cultivated areas have increased 21 fold since the 2001 US-led invasion.
What the media reports fail to acknowledge is that the Taliban government was instrumental in 2000-2001 in implementing a successful drug eradication program, with the support and collaboration of the UN.
Implemented in 2000-2001, the Taliban’s drug eradication program led to a 94 percent decline in opium cultivation. In 2001, according to UN figures, opium production had fallen to 185 tons. Immediately following the October 2001 US led invasion, production increased dramatically, regaining its historical levels.
The Vienna based UN Office on Drugs and Crime estimates that the 2006 harvest will be of the order of 6,100 tonnes, 33 times its production levels in 2001 under the Taliban government (3200 % increase in 5 years).
Cultivation in 2006 reached a record 165,000 hectares compared with 104,000 in 2005 and 7,606 in 2001 under the Taliban.
…
The foregoing estimates are consistent with the UN’s assessment concerning the size and magnitude of the global drug trade.
The Afghan trade in opiates (92 percent of total World production of opiates) constitutes a large share of the worldwide annual turnover of narcotics, which was estimated by the United Nations to be of the order of $400-500 billion.
(Douglas Keh, Drug Money in a Changing World, Technical document No. 4, 1998, Vienna UNDCP, p. 4. See also United Nations Drug Control Program, Report of the International Narcotics Control Board for 1999, E/INCB/1999/1 United Nations, Vienna 1999, p. 49-51, and Richard Lapper, UN Fears Growth of Heroin Trade, Financial Times, 24 February 2000).
Based on 2003 figures, drug trafficking constitutes “the third biggest global commodity in cash terms after oil and the arms trade.” (The Independent, 29 February 2004).
Afghanistan and Colombia (together with Bolivia and Peru) constitute the largest drug producing economies in the world, which feed a flourishing criminal economy. These countries are heavily militarized. The drug trade is protected. Amply documented the CIA has played a central role in the development of both the Latin American and Asian drug triangles.
The IMF estimated global money laundering to be between 590 billion and 1.5 trillion dollars a year, representing 2-5 percent of global GDP. (Asian Banker, 15 August 2003).
A large share of global money laundering as estimated by the IMF is linked to the trade in narcotics, one third of which is tied to the Golden Crescent opium triangle.
Opium…the opiate of the masses!
What’s the implication of 33x the supply on the streets? That’s insane..
duh
Kev,
I just want to take credit for the boston globe article about advertisers who can now beam ads into our brains.
I have it ready for tomorrow’s LATOC update, came over here to see if you had spotted it. It’s a classic:
http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2007/04/24/the_marketers_have_your_ear/
If I am reading this right, and it doesn’t surprise me, then the invasion into the Afghanistan meant that the ‘drug-producing’ land was got back from Taliban, and the real ‘kingpin’ took the ‘henchmen’ to protect the ‘crop’. Does it mean that the infamous ‘war on drugs’ is as much bogus as the dreadful ‘war on terror’ is? Are we supposed to believe that there is no good things left in this world?
Before the Icrack war the US gave the Taliban something like forty million bucks for the great work they did on opium eradication.
A couple weeks later when they were hawking for their war, one of the Repug bullet points was to eliminate the evil Taliban opium trade.
Enjoy.
Don’t be ridiculous. The taliban only curtailed heroin production by suppressing the poor people who can only make money from growing opium (you know, fundamentalists don’t really have any concept of human rights, a bit like moral puritanism and the abolition movement in the US). The aims of the war on drugs might be at odds with the war on terror but to suggest that the US invaded Afghanistan to let people sell heroin is fucking ridiculous.
Bringing freedom to people in Afghanistan has had an unfortuante side effect, but please don’t use this issue as some sort of proof for your ridculous theories.
Jeff, can you help me with a better explanation of the following timeline? That would be great.
Opium Production in Afghanistan:
1980: 0%
CIA moves in.
1986: 40%
1999: 88%
Taliban moves in.
2000: 0%
2002: US invasion
2005: 80%
http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney09082004.html
“THE TALIBANS DESTRUCTION OF THAT (OPIUM) CROP WAS APPARENTLY THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT ACT OF ECONOMIC WARFARE AGAINST US ECONOMIC INTERESTS THAT THE TALIBAN HAD EVER COMMITTED”.
“Before 1980, Afghanistan produced 0% of the world’s opium. But then the CIA moved in, and by 1986 they were producing 40% of the world’s heroin supply. By 1999, they were churning out 3,200 TONS of heroin a year  nearly 80% of the total market supply. But then something unexpected happened. The Taliban rose to power, and by 2000 they had destroyed nearly all of the opium fields. Production dropped from 3,000+ tons to only 185 tons, a 94% reduction! This enormous drop in revenue subsequently hurt not only the CIA’s Black Budget projects, but also the free-flow of laundered money in and out of the Controller’s banks”
Jeff’s right. I spent time in Afghanistan working on anti-poppy campaigns; the reason production is up so much is because we don’t find and publicly torture and kill the people who grow it, like the Taliban did.
So, the people of Afghanistan now hove freedom? And this isn’t a ridculous theory?
Several points of interest.
1. The work of “fiction,” “Kabul,” from the viewpoint of three elite Afghani young adults coming of age, refers to a CIA operative saying that the U.S. economy has become dependent on drug-trafficking.
2. Between alcohol, cigarettes, illicit drugs, prescription meds, over-the-counter-meds, video-games, shopping, eating out, adrenaline-addiction, 2-minutes hate addiction, alternate-reality addiction, etc. etc. etc.
oh, I forgot porn and hookers! Oh, and external validation via trophies, fake academic praise; fake spiritual comfort.
+
3. Law enforcement, judicial system, all related support industries, taxing, rehab industries, prison industries . . . etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.
+
4. Surplus of rubes, all of whom have weaknesses to which vices are targeted via marketing, especially constantly reproducing themselves
=
Vast majority of humanity willing enslaves itself in feeble attempts to set itself free; [LRH= If you really want to enslave people, TELL them YOU’LL set them free.] while amoral elites profit and kill one another over market share.
Conclusion: In pursuit of heaven, each winds up in his or her own hell, even the elites, who believe that all intangible values or ideals, the true values and only ones worth having, are worthless frauds, and that life is shit, and thus they miss out and are miserable; see Pat Dollard.
Speculation: I wonder how much of that opium winds up in Big Pharm. I mean, terminal cancer patients need their morphine too.
George Kenney is ABSOLUTELY RIGHT.
Why go into Afghanistan – the Vietnam for the USSR – if the Taliban wasn’t pissing in a U.S. moneymaker’s Cheerios?
I read Ruppert’s “Crossing the Rubicon” up until and including his chapter on the heroin culture/connections in Afghanistan. At that time in my life I just couldn’t absorb anymore info that protrayed the USA for what it is and slammed shut Ruppert’s book – and I’ve never opened it again. Someday I’ll finish the book.
I can’t blame the Afghans for growing heroin poppy, jimminy Christmas, the world has used their country as a battleground for how many years now? How else to put food on their families?
In my humble opine, its never been the natural gas, finding OBL or whatever, its that the US crime syndicate needs their poppies, poppies, lovely poppies (spoken in the voice of the Wizard of Oz Wicked Witch of the West).
Alfred McCoy’s “The Politics of Heroin” is an immensely detailed tome on this subject.
I’ve seen a lot of info. lately on this story in doing research for my blog, and it seems difficult to get the real story. When the news sources are so conflicted, it usually seems to me that the people in power are up to something shady…
“Jeff, can you help me with a better explanation of the following timeline? That would be great.
Opium Production in Afghanistan:
1980: 0%
CIA moves in.
1986: 40%
1999: 88%
Taliban moves in.
2000: 0%
2002: US invasion
2005: 80% ”
Yes, I’ll explain those statistics.
They are complete bollocks! Could you please give reference for them?
Afghanistan has produced opium for thousands of years. It is an opium producing country, that is its cash crop.
The idea they just started after 1980 is looney tunes. its untrue! Read some history books!
I’d say you were lying, but really that statement doesnt have the sophistication of a lie
More to the point, by criticising the US as allegedly encouraging heroin production you are playing into excatly the anti-drug rhetoric peddled by the UN and the US DEA.
The obvious issue is that drugs need to be regulated in a sane and rational manner. Failure to do this is a major causal factor in the growth of the Taliban/ al Qaeda.
By focusing on the increased opium harvest in Afghanistan you are effectively saying that the problem with the DEA/UNDCP etc is that they are not doing their work hard enough, rather than questioning the grounds for that work in the first place.
Anybody who disagrees; you are praising the Taliban for torturing and killing poor farmers whose only livelihood is through opium. They might bring stability by doing this, but only by killing eveyone they disagree with.
I sympathise with the aims of this blog but you seem to be vilfying the US even if its policies have had some good results
UN Study cited here for opium production 1980-2005.
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?startpos=100&timeline=complete_911_timeline&the_post-9/11_world=afghanistan
They are free so they can grow opium. I live in the USA but I am not allowed to grow opium. Why did we invade Afghanistan and make their people more free than we are? Can we invade ourselves next and make our home actually free too? I would love to be free to grow whatever plants i would like for myself. What a concept. Maybe I could ingest into my belly whatever I like too, that would be sweet, and “free”. And maybe we could adopt the freedom most countries have and allow ourselves to be able to hunt or fish for our daily food without need of government permits giving us permission to keep ourselves alive. maybe even one day we can outlaw the use of foreign PAC money to influence our political system and keep it all home grown. Oh and what a trip down happy lane it would be if all my family didn’t have to leave our land to go kill people, they could just stand on the borders and do that.
Jeff,
Are you denying CIA in volvement in Afghanistan opionum prduction because it sounds “outrageous” or becuase you know for a fact it’s not what is going on? Does Iran/Contra affair (whose hearing was televised)ring a bell? CIA drug trafficing is nothing new.
“We do many things at the federal level that would be considered dishonest
and illegal if done in the private sector.”
Donald T. Regan, New York Times, August 25, 1988
http://www.dreamscape.com/morgana/reagan.htm
Wake up and smell the coffe.
There had been a Jesuit presence in Vietnam for centuries, so it had been decided that about a million or so Buddhists would have to be “purged”. They would later continue this purge of Cambodia, with Pol Pot, and the purge is yet for Thailand. It was a purging of Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam of all these Buddhists, just like they purged the Buddhists of China with Mao Zedong, because Mao Zedong was completely controlled by the Jesuits. So, they wanted the Vietnam War.
The other thing is that Rome is in control of the drug trade. The Vatican controls all of the drug trade—all of the heroin, all of the opium, all of the cocaine, everything going around in Columbia.
Columbia has a concordat with the Pope. A concordat is a treaty with the Pope. Hitler had a concordat. Mussolini had a concordat. Franco had a concordat. They want to set up a concordat here, which was the reason for Reagan formally recognizing the sovereign state of Vatican City in 1984. The greatest traitor we ever had was Ronald Reagan.
So, they had a concordat. Columbia has a concordat. Do you think that drugs running out of Columbia, with a country that has a concordat with Rome, is not controlled by Rome? If Rome didn’t want the drug trade out of Columbia, they’d end the concordat. The whole drug trade is run by high Mafia families out of the country of Columbia, subject to the Jesuit General.
And the Jesuit General ran the Opium trade, a couple of centuries ago, out of China. They ran the silk trade, the pearl trade. The movie Shogun is but a slight scratching of the surface of the Jesuit “black ships” that trafficked in all of this silk and pearls and gold and opals and everything they could pull out of the East, including opium.
The Vietnam War was to consolidate and control this huge massive drug-trade that would inundate every American city with drugs, being brought in by the CIA with their Air America, and then distributed by the Trafficante family throughout the United States—Santos Trafficante out of Miami.
http://www.geocities.com/propheticangel2001/blckpope.htm
Yes…. couldn’t agree more with your article. It’s such a shame to see this happening. Not only heroin, but oil, slavery and other BS that this war has brought on…