[Firestarter]

Afghanistan - narco-state

I didn't expect to find so much information on the connections between known drugs traffickers and the elite.
Take a deap breath; this appears to be my last post in this thread with “old” research (there is of course a lot more so who knows?)...


As part of “the war on terror”, the international community has openly supported the cultivation of poppy in Afghanistan. The 21st century Afghanistan is the country in the world that most deserves to be called a full-blown narco-state.

The U.S. military has openly said that it protects Afghani poppy fields. It’s claimed that this will appease farmers, while it’s supposedly the Taliban that forces these farmers to grow poppy.
There is even an example, where a US soldier seems to be helping with cultivation.
In November 2009, the Afghan Minister of Counter Narcotics Khodaidad Khodaidad said that the majority of drugs are stockpiled in 2 provinces controlled by US, UK, and Canadian troops. He also claimed that NATO forces are taxing the opium and that foreign troops are earning money from drug production in Afghanistan: https://publicintelligence.net/usnato-tr...ghanistan/

See the heavily armed US mercenaries patrolling the poppy fields


In a 2010 report by Geraldo Rivera on Fox News, a USMC Lt. Col. Admitted that US forces encourage the Afghans to grow different crops, and tolerate poppy cultivation. The US army claims they are teaching the Afghans who are the “good” guys.
The marines also got a nice visit by British Crown Prince Charles (for some reason the original longer video was deleted by Youtube)…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUATfLDiwVA


In 1983, the British SAS trained the Mujahedin fighters of the drugs trafficking Osama Bin Laden in the hills surrounding the Criffel, Dumfries and Galloway in Scotland: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/1546995.stm


In 2007, Dutch minister Agnes van Ardenne admitted that Dutch soldiers in Afghanistan won’t take part in the destruction of opium poppy crops because it’s “counterproductive”. Van Ardenne said the Netherlands and other European NATO members oppose the plan to destroy the poppies, and would explain this to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
According to NATO commander US Gen. James L. Jones:

Having NATO troops out there burning crops, for example, is not going to significantly contribute to the war on drugs. It's much more sophisticated and complex than that.

https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/wor...stan_x.htm


In 2007, the Daily Mail reported that the biggest success that the British troops had achieved; is that Afghanistan is now capable of converting opium into heroin on an industrial scale in factories themselves. This has resulted in Afghanistan exporting heroin (instead of opium) and has lowered the heroin prices in Britain.
Millions of gallons of the needed chemicals are shipped into Afghanistan by tanker. The transport is greatly supported by the roads creating with American aid.
The 4 largest players in the heroin business are senior members of the Afghan government.
After Alexander Litvinenko reported about the major involvement of government officials in St Petersburg in the heroin trade, he had to flee Russia, because he named political allies of President Vladimir Putin. Litvinenko died in London in 2010 by polonium 210 poisoning: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...-time.html


Brother of the (then) Afghan president, Ahmed Wali Karzai, was suspected of being a key player in the booming opium trade. Ahmed Wali Karzai was paid for his “assistance” by the CIA since the NATO invasion of Afghanistan for at least 8 years. Ahmed Wali Karzai denied the money from the CIA but said he received regular payments from his president brother.
A top former Afghan Interior Ministry official said that a major source of Ahmed Wali Karzai’s influence over the drug trade was his control over key bridges crossing the Helmand River.
Ahmed Wali Karzai got sort of controversial when the CIA’s local paramilitary group, the Kandahar Strike Force, shot and killed Kandahar’s provincial police chief, Matiullah Qati: www.nytimes.com/2009/10/28/world/asia/28intel.html


Here’s a 2010 article by Alfred McCoy, with also some history of the support of the drug trafficking mujahedeen, Hekmatyar and the Pakistani ISI by the CIA.
The Bush administration did nothing to stop the heroin boom, and helped create a drug economy that corrupted and crippled the government. In recent years, for some 500,000 Afghan families, nearly 20% of the country's population, their main source of income is poppy cultivation.
In late 2004, President Bush said he did not want to "waste another American life on a narco-state''.
Many Afghan officials, from village leaders to Kabul's police chief, the defence minister, and the brother of President Hamid Karzai, have been involved in the drugs trafficking - EDIT new link: http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175225/t...rug_war__/
(archived here: http://archive.is/fdT8w)


See the estimated numbers of the UN in metric tons, according to which 2007 was the top year…


Following is a 2016 article, on the decrease of poppy eradication in 2016,
In 2016 only 355 hectares, or 877 acres, of poppy were destroyed in 2016, a 91% decline from 2015.
According to the official numbers, 90% of the world’s heroin comes from Afghanistan: https://www.businessinsider.nl/opium-pop...=true&r=US


The 2004 World Bank paper “DRUGS AND DEVELOPMENT IN AFGHANISTAN” shows that there is no plan for poppy eradication at all, but only a plan to “control” the drug trade:

The development implications of the opium economy include pluses as well as minuses. Among the former are the support provided by the opium economy to overall economic activity and the balance of payments. The opium economy has boosted rural incomes and has served as a coping mechanism helping large numbers of poor people through wage labor and sharecropping and tenancy arrangements which provide them with access to land and credit, albeit on unfavorable terms.
(...)
Widespread availability of grain (imported or domestically produced) on local markets may enable farmers to shift more acreage to opium poppy cultivation by obviating the necessity to grow grain for self-consumption.
(...)
In the short run, Afghanistan’s drug industry provides significant macroeconomic benefits for the country. Comprising a large share of total economic activity (roughly one-third in 2003), it is a major source of aggregate demand—for services, durable goods, construction, etc. It provides incomes and livelihoods for large numbers of people. In recent years Afghan farmers have received in the range of half a billion dollars annually from opium production, with another several hundred million dollars probably going to wage laborers (see Ward and Byrd 2004). This constitutes an enormous injection of income into Afghanistan’s battered rural economy. The drug industry supports Afghanistan’s balance of payments with a net positive impact that is hard to ascertain but may be in the range of $500-1,000 million annually, facilitating conservative macroeconomic management and supporting the currency. And although the drug industry as an illegal activity does not provide tax revenues directly to the government (except perhaps small local revenues), imports from drug proceeds do generate significant amounts of customs revenue.
(...)

(...)
The question of controlling the monetary proceeds of the drug trade, which are transferred through the informal hawala financial system, is important. The subject is mentioned in the strategy but no specific actions are proposed.
(…)
Overall, an eradication-led strategy would face severe problems with implementation, poverty impacts, and political damage.

http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTCP...18_Web.pdf
(archived here: http://archive.is/7IbtR)