Drugs? What Drugs? (US ignoring Afghan Opium)

[Nambe]

From the Aug. 18, 2003 issue of TIME magazine

While searching for Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters, U.S. special forces in Afghanistan routinely come across something they're not looking for: evidence of a thriving Afghan drug trade. But they're not doing anything about it, antinarcotics experts tell TIME. Several Kabul diplomats familiar with U.S. military operations say that while carrying out searches in eastern and southern Afghanistan — opium-growing areas that are also Taliban strongholds ---

The debate over whether to crack down on the drug trade has reached the top levels of the Pentagon. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld doesn't want the already over-stretched 8,000 U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan to become sidetracked from their main goal: to capture and kill terrorists. And chasing drug smugglers could take away allies from the Americans. Diplomats say many of the local commanders the U.S. military relies on for intelligence on al- Qaeda and the Taliban and to provide hired guns are mixed up in the drug business. "Without money from drugs, our friendly warlords can't pay their militias," says a Kabul diplomat. "It's as simple as that."

Banish bush From Texas Too

[LauraK]

1. Never mind, the war on drugs is really for oil.

So Time Magazine should stop making a fuss.

[ianbruce]

2. "Support your friendly neighborhood Warlord?"

... and the drug trade, which finances terrorism, is now a "sidetrack"?

Who elected these assholes?


on edit: Oh yeah. NOBODY.

[chiburb]

3. Nobody. n/t

.

[Wonder]

4. the drug trade has always come in handy

it helps placate the innercities in america. Who was responsible for the importation of Heroin in the early 40's? and then of course there was the cocaine during Iran contra. Cracking down? Nah it is more a kind of black market (covert op) form of barter. And since most of it comes through minority neighborhoods it enables the elitists to perpetuate the kind of racism that keeps the lower classes divided.

[alfredo]

5. Saw the same thing in Viet Nam

and Central America. I wonder if Richard Secord is helping with transportation?

You notice that there was a big crackdown on the popular street drugs right as we were getting involved in Afghanistan. Remember there was a big crackdown on heroin right as we were getting involved with the cocaine smuggling Contras. There was a crackdown on cocaine after that war ended. there was a big crackdown on Turkish heroin when Nixon took office. Heroin then flowed like water from SE Asia. Just as the So Vietnamese government fell, disrupting the flow of heroin, restrictions on Turkish poppy production was lifted.

right before we got involved in Gulf war 1 the SE Asian mother ship and a huge drug warehouse was busted, crippling the Asian heroin trade. Bush 41 had recently cut Iraq war deals with Turkey, and Syria, both heavily involved in the Heroin trade.

Fat Boy was the name of a legendary drug smuggling plane. It seemed to live a charmed life, moving in and out of the Us with impunity. It got shot down, one survivor was Gene Hassenfus, an employee of Richard Secord's Southern Air. Southern Air did the resupply effort for the Contras. Back during the Viet Nam war, the air transport company was called Air America. I don't know what name is used in and around the Afghanistan war.

[Wonder]

6. LOL

yeah air america. yes that about sums it up. thanks for the refresher.

[Nambe]

9. Greenbriar International has replaced Air America.

I have a friend working for them that can no longer hang out with us until she leaves the job. Active Dems are a liability. I'm not kidding.

[Wonder]

10. thanks for the info

I will do a googles get more up to date with it in specific terms.

[Rex]

7. Now wait one dam minute!

They lock someone up in THIS country for smoking a joint...but let the poppy fields overflow in Afghanistan because our "friends" there payroll their thugs with drug money?

WTF?

[donotpassgo]

8. Hello DU

forgot to introduce. Anyways, I think this hands off approach to the poppy fields helps placate the Afghan people. Burning their biggest cash crop only builds resentment and when you are trying to install a puppet government, you need all the support you can get.

[Julien Sorel]

11. The evil, hated, despicable Taliban, from whose clutches

we rescued the Aghan people, were able to do it. Why can't the U.S.? Aren't we popular there? Don't the Afghan people like us? Bush is about to run an election campaign based in part, on the U.S. 'success' in Afghanistan. If we are so successful there, why do we need to allow the locals to grow opium, when the regime we threw out was able to curtail the trade, and remain in power?

[donotpassgo]

13. Maybe curtailing Opium is a sign of repression to them?

I've been watching Traffik (not the silly Zeta Jones movie) the BBC version and the whole tangled web of that trade is just frightening.

[donotpassgo]

14. Oh, and the British and American Imperialism

controlling their crops is not looked on too highly by the people.

[LauraK]

12. Poppy farmers get paid very little for their crops!

We could pay them not to farm anything with a tiny portion of what the DEA spends chasing heroin traffic that results from their produce. Don't think for a minute that our government is not involved in the heroin business.

[alfredo]

15. It will not make any difference to them

the taliban will resist with our without the poppy.

[newyawker99]

16. Hi donotpassgo!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[donotpassgo]

20. thank you kindly

[CRK7376]

17. Absolutely true!

Where I patrolled in the middle of Afghanistan there were numerous fields that had dope growing in them or nearby. Poppy fields were plentiful too. Several of them were just below our firebase. Asking the locals why they grew the stuff....it paid them so they could buy food for their families was the common response. Refugee and International Aid organizations were not showing up with huge quantities of food etc very far outside of Kabul. THe standard statement was that it was illegal to grow the stuff, the government was cracking down on it, but we never saw the Afghan government irradicating the dope/poppy fields. We were told not to mess with the fields, but we did walk through numerous fields and took lots of photos standing amongst the plants.....

[slackmaster]

19. It's a traditional crop there, problem is the black market

The international War On (some) Drugs creates the opportunity for high profits from refining and smuggling opiates. The opium trade is a problem because we (beginning with the Brits) defined it as a problem.

[stickdog]

18. Well, ain't that a smack in the arm.

Well that confirms it.

Irag was about oil graft.

Afghanistan was about junk bonds.