Afghanistan’s major product is opium and opium production has increased remarkably during the present war. the real agenda of the Afghan war has been control of the opium trade. the opium trade has tracked across Southern Asia for the past five decades from east to west, following US wars, and always under the control of US assets
1960s, secret war in Laos using the Hmong opium army of Vang Pao as its proxy, Southeast Asia produced 70% of the world’s illicit opium
Since 2002, Afghan opium production has reached 93% of world illicit production, an unparalleled performance. In the 1980s the US supported the Mujahideen against the Soviets. peasants to grow opium as a revolutionary tax and in Pakistan, under the protection of Pakistani Intelligence, operated hundreds of heroin labs.
Golden Crescent eclipsed the Golden Triangle To hide US complicity the DEA were required to look away from US allies such as the ISI and the Pakistani banks
CIA’s mission was to destabilise the Soviet Union by promotion of militant Islam inside the Central Asian Republics. CIA facilitated anti-Soviet rebels in Uzbekistan, Chechnya and Georgia. Drugs were used to finance terrorism.
Soviet withdrew in 1989 leaving a civil war until 1992. Afghan lapsed into warlordism. opium thrived. Then the Taliban emerged to remove war lords and apply
Sharia law. The captured Kandahar in 1994, capturing Kabul in 1996. opium was curbed. September 1999, a decree was issued to reduce output by one-third. A second decree in July 2000 to completely stop. 2001 was the worst year. Through the nineties the global average was 4000 tonnes, during the Taliban, it fell to less than half.
11 September 2001, the northern alliance, led by US Special Forces, supported by daisy cutters, cluster bombs and bunker-busting missiles, shattered the Taliban. The opium ban was lifted and Afghanistan became the major producer. Hillary Mann Leverett confirmed that the US knew. Thomas Schweich from the State accused Hamid Karzai and accused the Pentagon. He wrote in the New York Times.
The most prominent was Ahmed Wali Karzai. During the last election he created phony ballots, “mafia-like” control, bought the election.
Douglas Valentine shows in The Strength of the Pack, never-ending war UK) and Japan used the opium to subjugate China.
In the Twenty-First century, opium is used against Iran, Russia and former Soviet republics. They all face spiralling rate of addiction and covert US penetration as the Afghan War fuels central Asia’s heroin plague.
Dr John Jiggens is the author of “The killer cop and the murder of Donald Mackay”.
