Americans Are Deeply Involved In Afghan Drug Trade

[pberq]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Americans-Are-Deeply-Invol-by-Glen-Ford-091129-86.html

November 29, 2009 at 17:27:55

Americans Are Deeply Involved In Afghan Drug Trade

<snip>

If you're looking for the chief kingpin in the Afghanistan heroin trade, it's the United States. The American mission has devolved to a Mafiosi-style arrangement that poisons every military and political alliance entered into by the U.S. and its puppet government in Kabul. It is a gangster occupation, in which U.S.-allied drug dealers are put in charge of the police and border patrol, while their rivals are placed on American hit lists, marked for death or capture. As a result, Afghanistan has been transformed into an opium plantation that supplies 90 percent of the world's heroin.

An article in the current issue of Harper's magazine explores the inner workings of the drug-infested U.S. occupation, it's near-total dependence on alliances forged with players in the heroin trade. The story centers on the town of Spin Boldak, on the southeastern border with Pakistan, gateway to the opium fields of Kandahar and Helmand provinces. The chief Afghan drug lord is also the head of the border patrol and the local militia. The author is an undercover U.S.-based journalist who was befriended by the drug lord's top operatives and met with the U.S. and Canadian officers that collaborate with the drug dealer on a daily basis.

The alliance was forged by American forces during the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, and has endured and grown ever since. The drug lord, and others like him throughout the country, is not only immune to serious American interference, he has been empowered through U.S. money and arms to consolidate his drug business at the expense of drug-dealing rivals in other tribes, forcing some of them into alliance with the Taliban. On the ground in Pashtun-speaking Afghanistan, the war is largely between armies run by heroin merchants, some aligned with the Americans, others with the Taliban. The Taliban appear to be gaining the upper hand in this Mafiosa gang war, the origins of which are directly rooted in U.S. policy. . .

[leveymg]

1. Read that Harper's article last weekend. Yes, this is like the Corsican Docks in the 1940s, or the

Golden Triangle during the the Vietnam War. Afghanistan is largely a war for control over the world heroin trade, with elements of U.S. intelligence running the show. CIA estimates there are perhaps 100 al-Qaeda figures in Afghanistan, so this occupation is not really about them. It's about natural resources, which in Afghanistan is only one thing, and maintaining a money and distribution network that extends from Kabul to Baluchistan to Istanbul to Jerusalem to New York.

It's an old story, but one which the US corporate media will never tell you.

[pberq]

2. Excellent points, leveymg

Michael Ruppert, in the video below, says that the drug money is laundered through the NY Stock Exchange.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiDX6UQl2no

[yurbud]

3. great find--thanks!