Afghan Opium & "International Terrorism"

[reprehensor]

"The American people have been seriously misled about the origins of the al Qaeda movement blamed for the 9/11 attacks, just as they have been seriously misled about the reasons for America’s invasion of Iraq.

The truth is that for at least two decades the United States has engaged in energetic covert programs to secure U.S. control over the Persian Gulf, and also to open up Central Asia for development by U.S. oil companies. Americans were eager to gain access to the petroleum reserves of the Caspian Basin, which at that time were still estimated to be “the largest known reserves of unexploited fuel in the planet.”

To this end, time after time, U.S. covert operations in the region have used so-called “Arab Afghan” warriors as assets, the jihadis whom we loosely link with the name and leadership of al Qaeda. In country after country these “Arab Afghans” have been involved in trafficking Afghan heroin." - Peter Dale Scott, 2005

"Al Qaeda both produces and profits from mayhem. After the organization's creation in Afghanistan, Mr. bin Laden recognized that global unrest presented it with opportunities to expand its influence, as well as pump its financial machine.

Years of bloodletting in Bosnia, for example, allowed Al Qaeda to establish a beachhead in central Europe, government officials said. When the United States guided three rival Balkan states to a peace accord at a meeting in Dayton, Ohio, in 1995, the stage was set for Al Qaeda and other militant groups. "Various very militant groups who were mujahedeen-connected were involved in the Bosnia campaign and took advantage of the Dayton peace accords to set up shop" in the Balkans, one former intelligence official said. "They found a very hospitable environment" when a portion of Bosnia was placed in the hands of Muslims...

Militants linked to Al Qaeda also established connections with Bosnian organized crime figures. The officials said Al Qaeda and the Taliban found a route for the trafficking of heroin from Afghanistan into Europe through the Balkans." - New York Times, 2001

"Washington's favoured mujaheddin faction was one of the most extreme, led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. The West's distaste for terrorism did not apply to this unsavoury “freedom fighter”. Hekmatyar was notorious in the 1970s for throwing acid in the faces of women who refused to wear the veil.

After the mujaheddin took Kabul in 1992, Hekmatyar's forces rained US-supplied missiles and rockets on that city — killing at least 2000 civilians — until the new government agreed to give him the post of prime minister. Osama bin Laden was a close associate of Hekmatyar and his faction.

Hekmatyar was also infamous for his side trade in the cultivation and trafficking in opium. Backing of the mujaheddin from the CIA coincided with a boom in the drug business. Within two years, the Afghanistan-Pakistan border was the world's single largest source of heroin, supplying 60% of US drug users.

In 1995, the former director of the CIA's operation in Afghanistan was unrepentant about the explosion in the flow of drugs: “Our main mission was to do as much damage as possible to the Soviets... There was a fallout in terms of drugs, yes. But the main objective was accomplished. The Soviets left Afghanistan.”" - Norm Dixon, 2001

"In other words, the CIA knew that al-Qaeda was involved in heroin-trafficking, but (as is so often the case with big-time drug-traffickers) was not widely sharing it. Why is this? Le Monde in particular has charged that bin Laden's network now uses the drug connections which bin Laden developed with his friend, the former CIA protege Gulbuddin Hekmatyar." - Scott, 2001

"Another farmer, while announcing his resolve to grow poppy this year onwards, says "It is banned in Islam but we don't use it, just grow it. We will only stop growing once they (the Westerners) stop using it."

The Afghan government also claims that Al Qaeda operatives are helping the drug cartels to traffic heroin to the West.

"It is an unholy alliance," says Mr.Rasoolzai, head of Eastern Afghanistan's antinarcotics department. "Al Qaeda is using drugs as a weapon against America and other Western countries. The weapon of drugs does not make a noise. The victim does not bleed and leaves no trace of the killer." ...

"Obviously I will grow poppy ... We brothers have decided to buy a land cruiser next year and five new kalashnikovs." - Christian Science Monitor, 2003

"U.S. forces hot on the trail of Osama bin Laden and the leaders of the Taliban in late 2001 didn't worry much about elderly, pious-looking men like Haji Juma Khan. A towering tribesman from the Baluchistan desert near Pakistan, Khan was picked up that December near Kandahar and taken into U.S. custody. Though known to U.S. and Afghan officials as a drug trafficker, he seemed an insignificant catch. "At the time, the Americans were only interested in catching bin Laden and Mullah Omar," says a European counterterrorism expert in Kabul. "Juma Khan walked."

That decision has come back to haunt the U.S. and its allies in Afghanistan. Western intelligence agencies believe that Khan has become the kingpin of a heroin-trafficking enterprise that is a principal source of funding for the Taliban and al-Qaeda terrorists. According to a Western antinarcotics official, since slipping out of Afghanistan after U.S. forces released him, Khan has helped al-Qaeda establish a smuggling network that is peddling Afghan heroin to buyers across the Middle East, Asia and Europe, and in turn is using the drug revenues to purchase weapons and explosives. A Western law-enforcement official in Kabul who is tracking Khan says that after a tip-off in May, agents in Pakistan and Afghanistan turned up evidence that Khan is employing a fleet of cargo ships to move Afghan heroin out of the Pakistani port of Karachi. The official says that on return trips from the Middle East, at least three vessels brought back arms, such as plastic explosives and antitank mines, which were secretly unloaded in Karachi and shipped overland to al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters. Khan is now a marked man. "He's obviously very tightly tied to the Taliban," says Robert Charles, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement. Mirwais Yasini, head of the Afghan government's Counter-Narcotics Directorate, says, "There are central linkages among Khan, Mullah Omar and bin Laden." ...

A recent World Bank report calculates that more than half of the country's (Afghanistan) economy is tied up in drugs. The combined income of farmers and in-country traffickers reached $2.23 billion last year�up from $1.3 billion in 2002. Heroin trafficking has long been the main source of funds for many local warlords' private armies, which continue to thwart Karzai's attempts to expand his authority beyond Kabul. But the drug trade is becoming even more dangerous: U.S. and British counterterrorism experts say al-Qaeda and its Taliban allies are increasingly financing operations with opium sales. Antidrug officials in Afghanistan have no hard figures on how much al-Qaeda and the Taliban are earning from drugs, but conservative estimates run into tens of millions of dollars.

Al-Qaeda's foray into drugs dates from the days when the Taliban ruled the country. Though most devout Muslims consider narcotics taboo, bin Laden never directly condemned drug sales. A Western antinarcotics official says that in early 2001 al-Qaeda's financial experts joined forces with Khan and other alleged top Afghan drug traffickers to persuade Taliban leader Omar to ban opium cultivation. The ban was self-serving: it drove up opium prices from $30 per kilogram to nearly $650. That meant huge profits for the Taliban and their trafficker friends who were sitting on large stockpiles when prices soared." - TIME, 2004

"Tajik authorities have claimed repeatedly that neither the US nor NATO exerts any pressure on the drug warlords inside Afghanistan. "There's absolutely no threat to the labs inside Afghanistan," said Avaz Yuldashov of the Tajikistan Drug Control Agency. "Our intelligence shows there are 400 labs making heroin there, and 80 of them are situated right along our border ... Drug trafficking from Afghanistan is the main source of support for international terrorism now..." - Asia Times Online, 2005

"This year's record harvest of 6,100 tons of opium will generate more than $3 billion in illicit revenue - equivalent to almost half of Afghanistan's GDP. Profits for drug traffickers downstream will be almost 20 times that amount.

Opium money is corrupting Afghan society from top to bottom. High-level collusion enables thousands of tons of chemical precursors, needed to produce heroin, to be trucked into the country. Armed convoys transport raw opium around the country unhindered. Sometimes even army and police vehicles are involved. Guns and bribes ensure that the trucks are waved through checkpoints. Opiates flow freely across borders into Iran, Pakistan, and other Central Asian countries.

The opium fields of wealthy landowners are untouched, because local officials are paid off. Major traffickers never come to trial because judges are bribed or intimidated. Senior government officials take their cut of opium revenues or bribes in return for keeping quiet. Perversely, some provincial governors and government officials are themselves major players in the drug trade.

As a result, the Afghan state is at risk of takeover by a malign coalition of extremists, criminals, and opportunists. Opium is choking Afghan society." - Antonio Maria Costa, 2006

"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...

Based on 2003 figures, drug trafficking constitutes "the third biggest global commodity in cash terms after oil and the arms trade." ...

Afghanistan and Colombia are 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." - Michel Chossudovsky, 2006

"Afghanistan`s heroin-producing poppies will not be sprayed with herbicide this year despite a record crop in 2006 and U.S. pressure for President Hamid Karzai to allow the drug-fighting tactic, a spokesman said Thursday...

Fueled by the Taliban, a powerful drug mafia and the need for a profitable crop that can overcome drought, opium production from poppies in Afghanistan last year rose 49 percent to 6,700 tons - enough to make about 670 tons of heroin. That`s more than 90 percent of the world`s supply and more than the world`s addicts consume in a year." - Pakistan Tribune, 2007

"WASHINGTON: According to a government report, Afghan heroin's share of the market in this country doubled from 7 percent in 2001 to 14 percent in 2004, the latest year studied. Meanwhile, heroin-related deaths are also on the rise, along with more seizures and more overdoses.

The amount of high-quality heroin throughout America is surging because of an increasing supply from Afghanistan -- and with it the fear that record-breaking poppy harvests after the U.S. invasion are fueling more addictions and overdose deaths back home...

Not only is more heroin being produced from Afghan poppies coming into the United States, it is also is the purest in the world, according to the DEA's National Drug Intelligence Center." - Pakistan Tribune, 2007

"Afghan insurgent leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar claimed in a television interview broadcast Thursday that his fighters helped Osama bin Laden escape intense U.S. bombardment in the Tora Bora mountains five years ago.

Hekmatyar, a former Afghan prime minister and leader of the Hezb-e-Islami militant group, told Pakistan's private Geo TV network that when the United States began its assault on the rugged Afghan mountains in late 2001, some of his fighters moved bin Laden, his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri and other associates to "a safe place" where he met them later.

He did not say where they found shelter. Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri are suspected to be still hiding along the Afghan-Pakistan border after the heavy U.S. pounding failed to kill them or lead to their capture.

Hekmatyar was a leader of the mujahedeen that fought the Soviet occupation of the 1980s and was briefly Afghan prime minister during the civil war of the early 1990s that cost tens of thousands of lives." - CNN, 2007

"Meanwhile, the drug economy is booming. The weakness of the state and the lack of security for licit economic activity has encouraged this boom, and according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, opium poppy production in the country reached a record 6,100 metric tons last year, surpassing the 2005 total by 49 percent. This increase belies past claims of progress, made on the basis of a five percent cultivation decrease in 2005. Although the decrease was due almost entirely to the political persuasion of farmers by the government, the United States failed to deliver the alternative livelihoods the farmers expected and continued to pressure the Afghan government to engage in counterproductive crop eradication. The Taliban exploited the eradication policy to gain the support of poppy growers.

Counternarcotics efforts provide leverage for corrupt officials to extract enormous bribes from traffickers. Such corruption has attracted former militia commanders who joined the Ministry of the Interior after being demobilized. Police chief posts in poppy-growing districts are sold to the highest bidder: as much as $100,000 is paid for a six-month appointment to a position with a monthly salary of $60. And while the Taliban have protected small farmers against eradication efforts, not a single high-ranking government official has been prosecuted for drug-related corruption.

Drugs are only part of a massive cross-border smuggling network that has long provided a significant part of the livelihoods of the major ethnic groups on the border, the Pashtun and the Baluch. Al Qaeda, the Taliban, warlords, and corrupt officials of all ethnic groups profit by protecting and preying on this network. The massive illicit economy, which constitutes the tax base for insecurity, is booming, while the licit economy slows." - Foreign Affairs, 2007

"Hundreds of tribal elders gathered in Kandahar on the weekend, summoned to a cavernous hall with flickering electricity for what the government hoped would be a major step toward peace in this volatile region.

The idea sounded simple enough when described by Afghan President Hamid Karzai five months ago as he dined with his Pakistani counterpart, General Pervez Musharraf. They invoked the traditional concept of a peace jirga -- a tribal assembly of elders that takes decisions by consensus -- suggesting a group of respected people from both sides of the border should sit down to discuss ways of ending Taliban attacks...

Almost every public figure in Afghanistan believes Pakistan is fomenting the insurgency in their country. Despite the government staffers handing out glossy posters featuring white doves and symbols of cross-border friendship, the Kandahar peace jirga sounded, at times, like a council of war...

The crowd, sitting on plush chairs and carpets, included nearly every important figure in Kandahar: The governor, the mayor, the police chief, religious leaders, provincial councillors, army officers, wealthy merchants, drug barons, and two brothers of President Karzai." - Globe and Mail, 2007

To top things off, international drug networks are expanding, growing stronger, involving a host of countries, and utilizing Russian banks for the laundering of narco-dollars.

There is a reason why Sibel Edmonds is the most gagged woman in America. The same reason applies to Indira Singh.

The threads that tie drugs to terror to organized crime to governments across the globe are interwoven with global capital in a hideous symbiotic relationship that is worse than a parasitic relationship.

It's worse because even though drug money is not a source of taxable revenue, the money is still being laundered and flows right back into the economy, an intravenous drip of hard currency that can only please Federal-level agencies that influence whether or not the money trail is followed.

Turning a blind eye to these connections results in horrible foreign policy;

"Of the almost 900 million DM which reached Kosovo between 1996 and 1999, half was thought to be illegal drug money. Legitimate fundraising activities for Kosovo and the KLA could have been used to launder drug money. In 1998, the U.S. State Department listed the KLA as a terrorist organization, indicating that it was financing its operations with money from the international heroin trade and loans from Islamic countries and individuals, among them allegedly Usama bin Laden. Another link to bin Laden is the fact that the brother of a leader in an Egyptian Djihad organization and also a military commander of Usama bin Laden, was leading an elite KLA unit during the Kosovo conflict. In 1998, the KLA was described as a key player in the drugs for arms business in 1998, "helping to transport 2 billion USD worth of drugs annually into Western Europe". The KLA and other Albanian groups seem to utilize a sophisticated network of accounts and companies to process funds. In 1998, Germany froze two bank accounts belonging to the "United Kosova" organization after it had been discovered that several hundred thousand dollars had been deposited into those accounts by a convicted Kosovar Albanian drug trafficker." - Ralf Mutschke, INTERPOL, House Testimony, December 13, 2000

"During the NATO campaign against the former Yugoslavia in the Spring of 1999, the Allies looked to the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) to assist in efforts to eject the Serbian army from Kosovo. What was largely hidden from public view was the fact that the KLA raise part of their funds from the sale of narcotics. Albania and Kosovo lie at the heart of the "Balkan Route" that links the "Golden Crescent" of Afghanistan and Pakistan to the drug markets of Europe. This route is worth an estimated $400 billion a year and handles 80 percent of heroin destined for Europe." - Frank J. Cilluffo, House Testimony, December, 2000

Things need to change.

Invade or bomb Iran? Nah, this President should get serious about the Afghanistan opium problem if he is serious about "International Terrorism". This should also be the focus for the Democratic Party if there is to be an intelligent, earnest approach to dismantling the infrastructure of terror.

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On a historical note, there is an important Australian production that has recently been made available on the internet called "An Unholy Alliance". It provides a good introduction to the history of the Afghan drug trade through the 80s and 90s (to approx. 1994) and also examines the CIA's role in Southeast Asia in drug trafficking in earlier decades.

You can read more about it here, and here.

Download a podcast or AVI of the film here.