Why would US Transform Afghanistan into a Drug Empire?
Today it is clear to pretty much everyone that Washington’s anti-drug campaign in Afghanistan has failed miserably in spite of the 8.5 billion dollars wasted on this conflict. According to expert, this year the level of drug production would be skyrocketing to unprecedented highs . The number of drug villages in Afghanistan have already exceeded last year’s figures, with about a third of the population being involved in the cultivation of opium poppy [...]
For a total of sixteen years the US has been occupying Afghanistan after invading immediately after the 9/11 attacks. This act of aggression has already become the longest war in American history, overtaking the “record” that was held by the Vietnam War that lasted from 1964 to 1975. During this period, Washington would spend over 800 billion dollars on the so-called reconstruction of the Afghan nation. As a result of this “reconstruction”, the Taliban has been regaining control over the country, which has resulted in this group controlling over 40% of Afghan territory. Additionally, opium production rates have overtaken the figures of 2001, as the Pentagon does nothing to combat drug trafficking.
It’s curious that according to the Al-Jazeera the estimated value of opium and its by-products produced in Afghanistan in 2016 reached 3.02 billion dollars up from 1.56 billion dollars in 2015. According to UN estimates, drug trafficking accounts for 15% of the Afghan economy, with every tenth person in the country being a drug addict! In comparison, the global average resides at the level of every twentieth citizen.
According to the experts engaged in fighting Afghan drug trafficking, an Afghan farmer would receive 600 dollars for eleven pounds of opium. However, a pound of heroin, produced from this amount would be sold for over 150 thousand dollars on the black market! At the same time, no one knows where in who’s pockets the missing 149 thousand dollars would go.
Under these conditions, what can be said about the forces of the United States who have allegedly been “protecting the country from the forces of international terrorism?”? How could local drug lords produce 6400 tons of opium in 2014 alone with a formidable force being deployed by NATO?
Once Americans invaded Afghanistan in 2001, the country began producing up to 95% of all heroin on the black market. At the same time, Washington under various pretexts refuses to fight drug production.
When the Taliban came to power in 1996, they would mercilessly destroy opium poppy plantations and shot drug traffickers on sight. But once NATO pushed them to the southern provinces of the country in 2001, they were no longer able to resist the idea of receiving funds for their jihad from a such a lucrative business as drug trafficking. Now it is difficult to say how much resources received from the drug are being used for weapons purchases and other military needs of the Taliban or those cash flows are just being abused by local warlords, who have been transformed from fanatical radicals into ordinary drug dealers.
Today it is clear to pretty much everyone that Washington’s anti-drug campaign in Afghanistan has failed miserably in spite of the 8.5 billion dollars wasted on this conflict. According to expert, this year the level of drug production would be skyrocketing to unprecedented highs . The number of drug villages in Afghanistan have already exceeded last year’s figures, with about a third of the population being involved in the cultivation of opium poppy. Predictably, the number of drug trafficking operations keeps growing, as there’s new smuggling routes appearing , for instance, across Africa. Analysts say that both the “Balkan” route (Pakistan-Iran-Turkey-Europe) and new trails across Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia and Ukraine are being used heavily to get Europe drown in narcotics.
At the same time, tons of precursors for the manufacture of narcotic substances are illegally imported into Afghanistan annually. A total 66 tons of such chemicals was seized in 2016, while over 50 tons were confiscated in the first six months of this year alone! Moreover, according to reports presented in Afghan sources, such countries as Italy, France and the Netherlands are among the main suppliers of those suppliers.
That is why one cannot help but be amazed by the disability of the US and NATO forces, despite their continuous presence in Afghanistan, to provide an ample support to the government of the country in the fight against drug production, which remains one of main sources of financing of terrorism, the fight against which, according to official statements, is Washington’s primarily goal in Afghanistan. According to UN estimates, about half of the revenues of illegal armed groups in Afghanistan, estimated at the level of 400 million dollars, are coming from the drug trade. Under these circumstances, the recommendations drafted by the US Special Inspector General for the Rehabilitation of Afghanistan on the need to develop of a comprehensive anti-drug strategy in Afghanistan is getting increasingly relevant. John Sopko’s remarks about the 8.5 billion dollars wasted on the anti-drug campaign in Afghanistan shows its utter failure, as the drug production levels in Afghanistan are breaking records, and the country remains the world’s largest producer and exporter of opium.
The organization SIGAR, created to control the funds allocated for the reconstruction of Afghanistan, submitted a report according to which the US spent hundreds of millions of dollars to support the Afghan government. At the same time it is clear to pretty much everyone that the longest war in US history can not be won without a comprehensive plan to fight drug trafficking. After 16 years of bloodshed Afghanistan still accounts for 75% of the world’s heroin supplies, and remains to this very date a country with the highest concentration of terrorist groups in the region.
The Nangarhar Province has virtually become a black market hub for all sorts of terrorists and drug traffickers. There is a very close relationship between heroin traffickers and terrorist groups, as drug traffickers surrender a part of their proceeds from the sale of drugs to the Taliban as a “zakat” – an obligatory donation, which is one of the five pillars of Islam.
As long as the US remains reluctant to address this problem, Trump will not be able to fulfill his promise to win. So why would Washington transform Afghanistan into a drug empire?
First of all, hardly anyone today will doubt that it is the drug trade that allows the US and NATO to control the population of this country, as well as local leaders. Why counter fight the North Atlantic Alliance troops, if they provide an opportunity to have a stable source income, no matter how illegal? The degree of involvement of Afghan peasants in the production of drugs is eloquently evidenced by the fact that peasants are getting loans to cultivate poppy crops.
It should also be remembered that drug trafficking is a powerful instrument for influencing Europe, as well as Central Asian countries, by creating a problem of drug dependence among their population, as well as creating the ground for financial nourishment of criminal groups that are advantageous to pro-Washington opposition groups. By concentrating their efforts on the struggle with internal challenges, these states will be economically and socially weakened, thus reducing their activities on the international arena, giving Washington to rule the world uncontested.
Finally, there is a clear financial link between the Afghan drug lords and the Alliance troops. Transportation, patronage and ensuring the safety of drug production is often carried out by the forces of American weapons and American means of transportation.
In 2006, the United States adopted a federal law on the fight against drug trafficking, which made it illegal to participate in the drug trade in order to provide material support to terrorist organizations and individuals involved in terrorist activities. According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, about 37% of all terrorist groups are related in one way or another to drug trafficking.
According to the report of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime in 2016, two-thirds of the world’s land used for the cultivation of opium poppy can be found in Afghanistan. In 2015, Afghanistan produced 77% of all world’s heroin. The purest injectable heroin that smugglers call “spin mal” that is being produced in the Nangarhar Province can be found all across the world, including the United States. And from here it is not difficult to understand who benefits from this drug trafficking.
So for some Aghanistan is a source of terror and death, while for others – a convenient opportunity for additional enrichment by engaging in the lucrative drug business.
Therefore, while the NATO countries and, in particular, the United States will have financial and political interests in the region, the problem of drug production in Afghanistan will remain one of the most important problems on the international stage.
Originally published on 2017-10-22
About the author: Valeriy Kulikov, expert politologist, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”
We would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.
Islam in the BalkansIt is the truth that the Balkan Peninsula is a mosaic of different and in some cases antagonistic religious communities with the Christian Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, and Islam as the principal religious denominations followed by different types of Protestants, followers of Judaism, Armenian Christian Orthodox, etc. The small Muslim communities existed at the Balkans even before the Ottoman conquest of the Peninsula which started in the mid-14th century but it was not until the mid-17th century that substantial Muslim population emerged firstly in Albania, Macedonia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Bulgaria.In a course of time, the Balkan Muslims became in ...
I won’t ever forget hearing the news – working in Pittsburgh as a marketing analyst, returning from lunch with colleagues when it was announced.November 22, 1963, was a Friday. The working day ended once the news broke, everyone in my department stunned, unable to focus on anything else.It was too early to know what evidence later revealed. Lee Harvey Oswald was a convenient patsy, uninvolved in what happened, a state-sponsored assassination, CIA, and secret service dirty hands likely responsible.Killing him mattered. Things might have been different had he lived, at least for a time. November 22, 1963, remains a stain ...
The full extent of the damage to international peace and security caused by the US-led Syrian strikes will take some time to become clear. But its impact on the very concept of legality in international affairs is already evident.Simply put, the most powerful county in the world and its chief satellites, the UK and France, have thrown the rule of law into the trash can. The only "law" now is the law of the jungle. There is no going back.Ironically, the attack itself was claimed by its perpetrators as enforcement of legality, not of its obliteration. For example, NATO Secretary-General ...
No city in Iraq is more symbolic of the criminal consequences of the US invasion of Iraq than Fallujah. Prior to 2003, the 300,000-strong, prosperous, predominantly Sunni Muslim community on the Euphrates River, one of humanity’s oldest continuous urban settlements, was known as the “city of mosques.” After 13 years of destruction at the hands of the US military and its client state in Baghdad, it is today a labyrinth of ruins, a city of the dead.Following weeks of air strikes by US, British and Australian bombers, a combination of Iraqi government forces and Shiite militias is reportedly on the ...
The conflicts that engulfed the former Yugoslavia still remain unresolved in the political arena and open to Western political shenanigans and covert meddling from Turkey and Saudi Arabia in Bosnia and Kosovo. Orthodox Christianity faces many attacks and only a naïve individual would claim that America and the hands of Turkey and Saudi Arabia are clean.Central Bosnia in 2016: Flags of the ISISAmerica and other Western nations did little to stop Turkey invading Cyprus in 1974 and creating a de-facto nation and altering the demographics of northern Cyprus and using this area for military purposes.Irrespective of the rights and wrongs ...
In 2003, America (and its lap-dog UK) invaded and destroyed Iraq on the basis of lies to the effect that the U.S. (and UK) regime were certain that Saddam Hussein had and was developing weapons of mass destruction. These U.S. allegations were based on provable falsehoods when they were stated and published, but the regime's 'news'-media refused to publish and demonstrate (or "expose") any of these lies. That's how bad the regime was (and its media's 'news' were) — this was virtually a total lock-down against truth, and for international conquest (in that case, of Iraq): it was mass-murder and ...
A now-notorious list of ostensibly “fake” news sites — created by a liberal professor, seemingly out of thin air — spread like wildfire online in the past two days and was eagerly reprinted by corporate media presstitutes hoping to vindicate their own failed reporting on the 2016 election.But branding perfectly legitimate outlets with the same scarlet letter as those devoid of integrity deemed the professor’s list a spurious attempt to defame alternative and independent media — anyone dissenting from the left’s mainstream narrative — as a whole.This is, in no uncertain terms, a hit list — or, at least, a laughable attempt — and ...
Veterans Day has passed. The annual ritual never changes. Politicians who didn’t serve in the armed services start unnecessary wars, killing military personnel whose sacrifices are then lauded. Officials say these heroes died defending our freedom. That is almost always a lie.Sometimes Washington must go to war. Not often, however. Despite the endless claims that we live in a dangerous world, America is amazingly safe. No other power could defeat, let alone conquer, the United States. Only Russia has a comparable nuclear arsenal, but it would be destroyed if Moscow targeted America. China and Russia trail U.S. conventional military strength ...
The Argentinian authorities are wondering about the massive purchase of land in Patagonia by a British billionaire, and the “holidays” that tens of thousands of Israeli soldiers are enjoying on his property.In the 19th century, the British government were undecided as to where they should settle Israel – either in what is now Uganda, in Argentina or in Palestine. In fact, Argentina was at that time controlled by the United Kingdom and, on the initiative of French baron Maurice de Hirsch, had become a land of refuge for Jews who were fleeing the pogroms in central Europe.In the 20th century, ...
Maybe it is the best agreement ever signed… Maybe by applying it, Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, will enter an era of great friendship and enormous prosperity…Maybe… The only small detail is the majority of the deputies of the Greek Parliament do not know the agreement is so good. Their parties declared they are opposing the agreement and they won’t ratify it. Even the An.Ell. party, which is the junior partner of SYRIZA in the government, does not know how profitable is this agreement. They said they would vote No to the agreement when introduced in the ...
Editor's note: Originally posted on 2016-01-11Serbia entered on December 14th, 2015 a final stage of negotiations with Brussels on the EU's membership. It is known, however, that the EU gave an informal ultimatum to Serbia to recognize Kosovo’s independence for the exchange of becoming a full Member State of the EU. The western (the USA/EU) client Serbia’s Government is currently under the direct pressure from Brussels to recognize an independence of the narco-mafia Kosovo’s quasi state or to give up an idea to join the EU. It is only a question when a western colony of Serbia has to finally ...
The US Agency for International Development (USAID) was created by Pax Americana to provide a cover for CIA agents under the pretext of helping the 3rd World. US Imperialism has to do some good or its potential targets would not open their doors to intelligence agents posing as do gooders, so USAID was created.Today the USAID is headed by Gayle Smith, formerly the “Special Advisor” to President Barack Obama and Senior Director of the National Security Council. To put it simply, Gayle Smith is one of the top “spooks” in the USA, someone who told the CIA what to do.Today ...
The following text by Michel Chossudovsky was presented in Seoul, South Korea in the context of the Korea Armistice Day Commemoration, 27 July 2013A Message for Peace. Towards a Peace Agreement and the Withdrawal of US Troops from KoreaIntroductionArmistice Day, 27 July 1953 is day of Remembrance for the People of Korea.It is a landmark date in the historical struggle for national reunification and sovereignty.I am privileged to have this opportunity of participating in the 60th anniversary commemoration of Armistice Day on July 27, 2013. I am much indebted to the “Anti-War, Peace Actualized, People Action” movement for this opportunity ...
As the recent PBS documentary on the American War in Vietnam acknowledged, few American officials ever believed that the United States could win the war, neither those advising Johnson as he committed hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops, nor those advising Nixon as he escalated a brutal aerial bombardment that had already killed millions of people.As conversations tape-recorded in the White House reveal, and as other writers have documented, the reasons for wading into the Big Muddy, as Pete Seeger satirized it, and then pushing on regardless, all came down to “credibility”: the domestic political credibility of the politicians involved ...
As was expected, President Trump has decertified Iran’s compliance with the nuclear deal or, to give it its full name, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), despite the fact that he certified it twice before. As recently as 14 September 2017, Trump also waived certain sanctions against Iran as required under the terms of the deal. Yet, in an extremely belligerent and hostile speech, he put out his new policy towards Iran.The certification of the deal is not part of the agreement, but as anti-Iranian hawks in both parties wanted to undermine President Barrack Obama and create obstacles on ...
On October 21, 2016 a typical Estonian school witnessed an opening ceremony of the bronze bust of Harald Nugiseks. He was an SS-Oberscharführer (Sergeant) in World War II, who served voluntarily in the 20th Waffen Grenadier Division of the Waffen SS. According to the director of this education institution, the memory of Harald Nugiseks will lead to the increase in feelings of patriotism among students and must increase their willingness to protect their country in case of external aggression.So who is this Nugiseks? – During the Second World War, he was awarded with the second highest military award in the ...
“What Russia is sponsoring and doing [in Syria] is not counter-terrorism it is barbarism”Samantha Power, US Representative to the United NationsThe US representative to the United Nations, Ambassador ‘Ranting Sam’ Samantha Power, accused the Russian and Syrian governments of ‘barbarism’, claiming Moscow or Damascus had attacked an unarmed United Nations humanitarian convoy delivering aid to civilians in Aleppo. No evidence was presented. Rants and threats do not require facts or proof; they only require vehement emotional ejaculations and compliant mass propaganda organs.‘Barbarians’, to be clear, evoke images of leaders and groups, which abjure all civilized norms and laws. They only ...
Abstract: This article investigates the Russian foreign politics at the region of the Balkan Peninsula after the dissolution of the Soviet Union at the time of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) World Order in relation to the Pan-Slavic ideals of intra-Slavic solidarity, reciprocity and brotherhood. The particular stresses are put on four main research topics: 1. The Pan-Slavism and Russia; 2. Relations between pro-Western and pro-Orthodox approaches of the Russian national interests on Russia’s domestic political scene; 3. Different attitudes towards the Balkans in Russia; and 4. Historical ties and future perspectives between Russia and the Serbs. A research ...
King Abdullah is being eulogized in the most unrealistic ways possible, from CNN designating him as a “reformer” to Chuck Hagel calling him “a powerful voice for tolerance, moderation and peace — in the Islamic world and across the globe.” Israeli President Reuven Rivlin takes the cake, however, by proclaiming that “his smart policy contributed greatly to Middle East stability.” None of these characterizations are true in any way, as Abdullah’s main legacy isn’t one of reform, tolerance, and regional stability, but of destruction, hate, and regional instability. Every contemporary Mideast problem except for the Israel-Palestine issue can be directly ...
The Western-backed myth of a Greater SerbiaMuch space, time and efforts have been devoted in the recent history of West Balkans, and in particular in the latest political upheavals, about the alleged project of a Greater Serbia especially by the Western authors either academic scholars or journalists.[1] The issue must be, however, considered together with its counterparts from Croatia (a Greater Croatia) and Albania (a Greater Albania). There are two focal questions that arose here:Were all these projects serious and what was the origin of this maximalist concept of forming the national states in the otherwise ethnically mixed area?Whose exact ...
