Opium crop clouds Afghan recovery

[ze_dscherman]

Opium growing is coming to dominate Afghanistan's economy, providing roughly half the war-shattered country's wealth, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned.

"A dangerous potential exists for Afghanistan to progressively slide into a 'narco-state' where all legitimate institutions become penetrated by the power and wealth of (drug) traffickers," the IMF said.

Afghanistan now provides about 75% of the world's opium crop, it added, which is worth around $20bn

SNIP

Meanwhile, on the sidelines of the meeting, the Afghan finance minister Ashraf Ghani pleaded for more aid for his country from Western donors, while warning that the deterioration of security in Afghanistan was dire and that without an "infusion of urgency" into everyone's commitment, the country could all too easily become a "narco-mafia state".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3127864.stm

Two questions:

Where does that heroin go?
Who will profit from this?

[bif]

1. So they're back where they were before we invaded.

We sure are dong a great job over there.

[Caution]

2. Hmmm...let's see

The soviet union invades in 1979...it takes the afghanis about three years to mount any serious resistance. The US invades in 2001 and it takes about 2 years for the first problems to flare up. I remember telling anyone who would listen that the afghanis would not stand for a US invasion and a puppet government and that we would be looking at the same problems the soviets ran into. Everyone said "no way. We are freeing them, they want us there, we wont make the same mistakes the soviets made. blah blah blah" Well, guess what, the Taliban is growing in power once again, the drug trade is flourishing again which will fuel the opposition powers (since the 'legitimate' government can't use money from the drug trade to fund itself). Look for major problems in Afghanistan (again) over the next couple of years. Look for Al-Quaeda to once again gather in the mountains and look for 2006 to be when the "Bush Doctrine" starts to take a serious pounding from historians everywhere.

[mrbill]

3. smells like ollie north/

[nolabels]

4. From Nazi's to the drug cartels, the niche group of the Secret Team......

Some of stuff that has went on with US government endorsement makes the Mafia look like boy scouts

http://www.decentria.com/narco.html

THE PHOENIX-BANGKOK HEROIN CONNECTION

by Brian Downing Quig
MONETARY AND ECONOMIC REVIEW

September 1, 1991 (Three weeks after the temple murders)

Just when Arizona was starting to recover from the assault on its public image caused by the worldwide notoriety of the Martin Luther King Holiday/Governor Ev Mecham Impeachment controversy, nine Buddhist monks turn up dead in what has all the appearances of a military style execution. Particularly heinous about this crime is the fact that Buddhist monks are perhaps the most gentle people in the world. Murder of a Buddhist monk in Asia is considered the gravest of all possible crimes. The nation of Thailand, from which this group originated, declared a day of national mourning.

The Phoenix police are investigating this as a hate crime. The Quayle-owned Arizona Republic has speculated about "rednecks." So far, except for someone seeing a red and white Bronco leaving the temple, the police have no clues. The executioners rushed into the temple at night and sprayed the victims with shotgun pellets, then laid them on the floor and shot each in the back of the head with a .22 caliber pistol. They were out the door in less than two minutes. There is a $100,000 reward which no one has stepped forward to claim. Let's be serious. This could not be a hate crime. Such persons do not have friends whose loyalty is stronger than $100,000 and they typically are not in enough control of themselves to keep their mouths shut. Robbery could not be entertained as a motive because the poverty of monks is well known. Although some gold rings were removed, this amounted to less than $100. There were no deliberations at the scene. The assassins knew what their objective was when they opened the door.

Obviously, we must look to some organization whose cohesiveness is such that $100,000 causes no temptation to talk - perhaps some organization whose profits are astronomically greater than this amount. The illegal narcotics industry would be the prime candidate. No state traffics more narcotics than Arizona. As the moral leaders of a sizable Thai community, these monks were in a key position to.learn of links in the narcotics trade between Bangkok and Phoenix. This knowledge could easily have become fatal - especially if these monks thought that the local DEA would appreciate their information.
There is little doubt that the DEA in Arizona facilitates the major portion of the drug trade in Arizona. CIA and Justice play their part. On November 26, l986, the day after Ollie North's office was sealed by White House security, $300 million worth of cocaine, stuffed into 18 military duffel hags, turned up beside a runway at the super secret Laguna Army Air Base located not far from Yuma, Arizona.

If we are to accept the DEA's account of this incident, we must believe that the pilot who flew these drugs to the air base from South America unloaded his cargo and got back into his plane and took a nap. Then he was discovered by two airmen who accepted his story that he was lost and out of fuel and provided the pilot 20 gallons of aviation fuel without as much as requesting his identification or recording the tail number on his plane! This 2 million acre base is the advanced missile testing range for the United States. It is the equivalent of the Soviet missile range involved with the Korean Airline 007 incident. ANY PILOT CAN CONFIRM THAT THIS COULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED THIS WAY.
(snip)

[Fovea]

5. What they Mena'd to say was

That it Funds Afghan recovery.

[bemildred]

8. Nice pun.

[bemildred]

6. Two answers

1. Europe mostly

2. Various "entrepreneurs" in the Caucasus and Middle East along
the route. Smuggling is a popular way to make a living in states
where central government control is lax or corrupt. For example a
lot of stuff moves through Chechnya, Georgia, and such places.
Governments are often not above picking up a bit of extra cash in
this way too.

---

I must say, the recovery of the crop in Afghanistan in the absence
of the Taliban has been impressive. One has to wonder what the
growers down in the Golden Triangle, and elsewhere, think of this,
it has the potential to depress prices, an ugly race-to-the-bottom
could ensue.

[stickdog]

7. Definition: Narco-state

Where the CIA sends its laundry.