Afghanistan produces largest heroin crop in the world

[KelleyKramer]

This is despicable!

This news article is of course NOT from the US press.

Has Bush produced the largest narco-state in the world?

The 2006 crop was, get this, not just an all-time record but 60 percent LARGER than the previous record. And the 2007 crop looks to be even bigger.

And notice it doesnt say opium, but heroin, there are now factories in Afghanistan converting the opium to the final product. They are bringing truckloads of chemicals into Afghanistan to produce this stuff.

And I can only imagine what this is doing to the crime rates on the streets across Europe

-----

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=469983&in_page_id=1770&in_a_source

In six years, the occupation has wrought one massive transformation in Afghanistan, a development so huge that it has increased Afghan GDP by 66 per cent and constitutes 40 per cent of the entire economy. That is a startling achievement, by any standards. Yet we are not trumpeting it. Why not? The answer is this. The achievement is the highest harvests of opium the world has ever seen.

-snip-

It now exports not opium, but heroin. Opium is converted into heroin on an industrial scale, not in kitchens but in factories. Millions of gallons of the chemicals needed for this process are shipped into Afghanistan by tanker. The tankers and bulk opium lorries on the way to the factories share the roads, improved by American aid, with Nato troops.

How can this have happened, and on this scale? The answer is simple. The four largest players in the heroin business are all senior members of the Afghan government – the government that our soldiers are fighting and dying to protect.

When we attacked Afghanistan, America bombed from the air while the CIA paid, armed and equipped the dispirited warlord drug barons – especially those grouped in the Northern Alliance – to do the ground occupation. We bombed the Taliban and their allies into submission, while the warlords moved in to claim the spoils. Then we made them ministers.

[Deja Q]

1. SMOKIN'!!!!!!!!!!!!

:woohoo: :smoke:


:sarcasm:

[bonito]

2. And it flows through Genocide oops I mean Turkey.

[KelleyKramer]

3. And Uzbekistan...

No wonder the Bushies like that repressive regime so much.

[JohnyCanuck]

4. The author of this Daily Mail article

is the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan. He was called back home because he refused to stop publicly objecting to the Uzbek dictator's secret police and their routine use of quite horrific forms of torture on the regime's political opponents and enemies. Uzbekistan received large amounts of US aid and was a key ally in the "war on terror." Just google "Craig Murray Uzbekistan" if you want the gory details.

[JohnyCanuck]

5. Craig Murray on George Bush's chum Karimov.

From a Democracy Now interview:

CRAIG MURRAY: Well, it goes back to before George Bush became President. In 1997 or 1998, George Bush, as Governor of Texas, had a meeting with the Uzbek ambassador to the United States, Ambassador Safayev, which was actually organized and set up by Kenneth Lay of Enron. And if you go to my website, you can find a facsimile of Kenneth Lay's letter to George Bush, telling him to meet Ambassador Safayev in order to conclude a billion-dollar gas deal between Uzbekistan and Enron. And that was the start of the Bush relationship with the Karimov regime.

Karimov is one of the most vicious dictators in the world, a man who is responsible for the death of thousands of people. Prisoners are boiled to death in Uzbek jails. And he was a guest in the White House in 2002. It's very easy to find photos of George Bush shaking Karimov's hand. Rumsfeld is particularly chummy with Karimov, so –

AMY GOODMAN: Boiled to death?

CRAIG MURRAY: Yeah, it was one of the first cases I came across, back in August or September of 2002. Two Muslim prisoners in Jaslyk gulag, which is an old Soviet gulag in the middle of the Karakum Desert, a sort of forced-labor camp, a terrible place where people are sent to die, effectively, two Islamic prisoners were boiled to death. They died of immersion in boiling water. The mother of one of the prisoners received her son's body back in a sealed casket, was ordered not to open the casket, and just to bury it the next morning. Despite being in her sixties, she managed to get the casket open in the middle of the night, even though police were guarding the house outside.

She got the body onto the kitchen table and took a series of detailed photos, which she got to the British embassy. I sent them back to London -- or, in fact, to Scotland, to the University of Glasgow, the pathology department. On the basis of these detailed photos, they did an autopsy report, in which they said that he had had his fingernails extracted, he had been severely beaten, particularly about the face, and he died of immersion in boiling liquid. And it was immersion, rather than splashing, because there is a clear tide mark around the upper torso and arms, which gives you some idea of the level of brutality of this regime.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/19/1452237#transcript

[entanglement]

6. I can't really blame the Afghans - btw, the article has a remarkable history lesson

"Afghanistan was not militarily winnable by the British Empire at the height of its supremacy. It was not winnable by Darius or Alexander, by Shah, Tsar or Great Moghul. It could not be subdued by 240,000 Soviet troops"

[KelleyKramer]

7. They are not being 'subdued' they are being bought off

Yes the article had some interesting history to the area.

But there is one big difference in this US led occupation..

They are not being 'subdued' they are being bought off

By enabling the drug lords to produce massive record breaking numbers of drugs and money.

[entanglement]

8. Both approaches are wrong, IMHO

Once civil society is destroyed by wars and invasion, it is very difficult to build it back up. It will need huge, sustained and sincere international efforts to even get Afghanistan back to where it was in 1970.

Honestly, at this stage I don't even think there IS an easy solution or way forward. Imperialists and greedy capitalists have been creating messes like this for many centuries now, enjoying the profits of wars and aggression while the working class picks up the tab in blood and $$$.

[JohnyCanuck]

9. To understand how the immense profits from illegal drugs

are used to prop up the above-ground, "legitimate" economy and stock market, read Catherine Austin Fitts article .

Narco-Dollars for Beginners
"How the Money Works" in the Illicit Drug Trade

by Catherine Austin Fitts
Special to the Narco News Bulletin
2001

SNIP

A Real World Example: NYSE's Richard Grasso and the Ultimate New Business "Cold Call"

Lest you think my comment about the New York Stock Exchange is too strong, let's look at one event that occurred before our "war on drugs" went into high gear through Plan Colombia, banging heads over narco dollar market share in Latin America.

In late June 1999, numerous news services, including Associated Press, reported that Richard Grasso, Chairman of the New York Stock Exchange flew to Colombia to meet with a spokesperson for Raul Reyes of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC), the supposed "narco terrorists" with whom we are now at war.

The purpose of the trip was "to bring a message of cooperation from U.S. financial services" and to discuss foreign investment and the future role of U.S. businesses in Colombia.

Some reading in between the lines said to me that Grasso's mission related to the continued circulation of cocaine capital through the US financial system. FARC, the Colombian rebels, were circulating their profits back into local development without the assistance of the American banking and investment system. Worse yet for the outlook for the US stock market's strength from $500 billion -- $1 trillion in annual money laundering -- FARC was calling for the decriminalization of cocaine.

http://www.ratical.org/co-globalize/narcoDollars.html

[Supersedeas]

10. keeping the public sedated