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Afghanistan's Billion Dollar Drug War - A Battle Authorities Are Losing
Amid ISIS' spread, with NATO troops pulling out, and local law enforcement agencies ill-equipped and underfunded, Afghanistan has once again become the frontline in the so-called "War On Drugs." As Al-Jazeera reports, Afghanistan's poppy fields, which feed the habits of drug addicts worldwide, are thriving, with cultivation of the crop hitting record highs last year. The number of Afghan addicts is soaring, and with the Taliban funded by the drug trade, security fears are paramount; but Afghan authorities are struggling to control the resurgence in poppy farming.
The following disturbing documentary investigates the escalating situation in Afghanistant, the implications for the global war on drugs, and what the future holds for this fragile nation.
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Video unavailable to be viewed in Boston, USA region on Zero Hedge.
This link is available....http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/101east/2015/05/afghanistan-billion-...
When did the Taliban start to profit from the drug trade when they shut it down?
Taliban's Ban On Poppy A Success, U.S. Aides Sayhttp://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/20/world/taliban-s-ban-on-poppy-a-success...
UNITED NATIONS, May 18— The first American narcotics experts to go to Afghanistan under Taliban rule have concluded that the movement's ban on opium-poppy cultivation appears to have wiped out the world's largest crop in less than a year, officials said today.
The American findings confirm earlier reports from the United Nations drug control program that Afghanistan, which supplied about three-quarters of the world's opium and most of the heroin reaching Europe, had ended poppy planting in one season.
But the eradication of poppies has come at a terrible cost to farming families, and experts say it will not be known until the fall planting season begins whether the Taliban can continue to enforce it.
''It appears that the ban has taken effect,'' said Steven Casteel, assistant administrator for intelligence at the Drug Enforcement Administration in Washington.
The findings came in part from a Pakistan-based agent of the administration who was one of the two Americans on the team just returned from eight days in the poppy-growing areas of Afghanistan.
Mr. Casteel said in an interview today that he was still studying aerial images to determine if any new poppy-growing areas had emerged. He also said that some questions about the size of hidden opium and heroin stockpiles near the northern border of Afghanistan remained to be answered. But the drug agency has so far found nothing to contradict United Nations reports.
let's try asking the cia to stop importing it.
This article doesn't make sense. The Taliban shut down the drug trade. The US went in and got it going again with our troops protecting the poppy fields. Is somebody not paying attention?
<<< war FOR drugs
<<< war ON drugs
Looney
Marines helping protect opium crop:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUATfLDiwVA
The Brits are in on the drug protection game too.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/afghan-opium-harvesting-protected-by-britis...
Opium grown and harvested without problem within sight of Camp Bastion. The ISAF forces protect the crops of the local drug baron, whilst taking out fields of his opponents.
The real authorities, al CIAda, put the poppy growers back in business in the first place
The opiates have to come from somewhere to keep the populations of the world in turmoil in order to justify the massive sec-mil-pol program and weapons expenditures… not to mention the massive medical and rehab expenditures here since we put them back in the opium biz.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-spoils-of-war-afghanistan-s-multibillion-dollar-heroin-trade/91
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/heroin-use-grows-u-s-poppy-crops-thrive-afghanistan-n388081
http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/data-mine/2015/08/19/the-heroin-epidemic-in-9-graphs
Folks it never changes.
What has really high profit margins where you can send in troops to control or steal:
1. Oil.
2. Natural Gas (hard to move and not that profitable)
3. Heroin/Opium
4. Stealing all the gold during a coup. See Ukraine and Libya for a start.
Oh also endless war allows the defense contractors to loot and pillage the US treasury.
This shit has been going on for at least 2 centuries or more. Boxer Rebellion in China when the Brits and Americans were running the opium business and making the Chinese addicts.
Vietnam/Indochina. South America.
Meyer Lansky first got rich running heroin through Mexico. Wonder why the Bushes/Clintons/Obiola want open borders? Drugs, cheap labor, slave sex trade.
USA creates Viet Minh (aka Seey Eye Aye op) to fight the French. Why? Opium money. Dien Bien Phu which broke the French's back was over Opium business.
http://druglibrary.eu/library/books/McCoy/book/24.htm
The USA backing Viet Minh who then morph into the Viet Cong. Just like how Al Qeada morphs into the even more scary ISIS. Always a new and improved boogie man to scare the sheep in the USA.
Look at the source of the story: Al Jazeera. That "news" outlet is an acknowledged mouthpiece of Saudi Intelligence, and therefore MI6 and the CIA.
Iran has been working with the Taliban to kill the opium trade from Afghanistan, through Kurdish regions in Iran and into Turkey. It was only a matter of time before the Taliban got accused of profiting from the thing they're fighting to destroy.
Lulz - if by losing you mean financing the CIA black budget, then yes we are losing badly...
That's why we have the Taliban in Afghanistan and ISIS in Syria and Iraq. We need "enemies" there to justify the oligarch's military action to control the wealth of those locations, or block the abilities of our competitors (Russia and China) to do the same. Our secret governemt and their black op armies supplement their fiat funding with money from illegal activiies including drug and oil smuggling. Of course these secret activities are classified at the highest levels.
Taliban are just the Afghani people trying to kick out the USSA terrorists, and you are 100% that Al Jazeera is a Saudi trip-goat fucker rag. This is why Russia said it would help the Taliban (people).
Although unpopular, I have said for years that the best/most economical answer is to have the US Gov. Buy all of it at fair market value and then destroy it. It supports the local economy, takes money away from our enemies and reduces drastically the amount of smack reaching the US. Although expensive it would save money over the long haul by reducing intidiction/treatment/law enforcement and probably save US lives. If the afghans are all addicted, not our problem.
I agree, give the farmers market value then set it ablaze. This combined with hefty fines for the bigest dealers and a true effort to stamp out the endemic corruption of Afghani and Pakistani officials. Treating addiction as an illness instead of a crime in the west would be more humane and empathetic. You only have to look at what has happened in Portugal to see what a different approach has achieved in such a short time. The truth is that addicts are victims of crime and in an uncaring and broken system they face a bleak future. The war on drugs has been a complete failure, they have never been so cheap and available as they are now.
Well, obviously DaNuts we are being down voted with no rebuttal and just a red arrow. This seems to me this sums up the problem. No one wants logical solutions, they just want to shit on others ideas without offering any counter argument. Unfortunately this seems to be the trend on Z H these days, so many new members have come on who don't understand that a down vote means nothing without a reason. I have just reached my 5 year anniversary here and I have to say this site is mere shadow of what it once was, it's really too bad. Where did all of the idiots come from? I come here less and less. It used to be people would have an counter argument and even if you did not agree at least folks had to express a point of view..... Not so much any more. Much like USA politics, you are wrong but no alternative answers.
Free thinkers like you and i now find themselves being indoctronated by muslim loathers who spread hate and anger. It looks like the the main stream media are winning the battle against reason with their propaganda. War on commies, war on drugs, war on mussies is easy to push on people who have never experienced a days war in their comfortable lives. There are no easy answers but throughout history it is clear that war has just spred misery to the masses and enriched the management. War is suffering, only peace brings true happiness.
These are incontrovertible arguments by the both of you. Very powerfully put indeed.
It's really simple.
Oil - Follow the money
War - follow the money
Drugs - follow the money.
Gold/Silver manipulation - follow the money.
The pattern is not difficult to see.
Absolutely. It all originates from the Criminal Fraud UNITED STATES, CORP. INC. & Pure Evil Psychopaths at the CIA / NSA Espionage arm. Plus all the 16-18 other rouge Criminal Intelligence Agencies & Criminal Contractors.
Only a total fucken moron believes this 'War on Drugs' bullshit....It's really a 'War' to determine who will SUPPLY, and profit from the sale, of the drugs.
Smash the CIA to smithereens. This is not a request.
what a cluster.
Looks like Aljazeera is lying to people and can no longer be trusted. The text is a quote from Aljazeera in Tyler Durdens article above.
Same in MD. Thanks for the link Lumberjack.
Horseshit psyops news story from Langlley.
Afghan annual heroin exports were ZERO tons before the CIA engineered 9-11 and the US troops showed up.
Current yearly exports of Afghan opium/heroin are in excess of 10 tons worth $800 billion, and this all happened while NATO was in charge.
Turkish labs turn opium into heroin for shipment to Europe https://www.rt.com/news/326731-turkey-afghanistan-heroin-europe/ The same process occurs in Kosovo, from where heroin is shipped to the US.
Langley uses its drug money to wage its wars and bribe every Western "leader" and presstitute. The big too-big-to-jail banks launder the money; best to keep all the business in the family.
Please, opium production is up 40 times since US/NATO invaded:
Afghan opium cultivation ‘grew 40-fold’ during US operation
Opium production in Afghanistan has “grown fortyfold” in the 13 years of US Operation Enduring Freedom, according to the head of the Russian Security Council. The intervention has “exacerbated existing problems,” rather than solved them.
https://www.rt.com/news/249665-afghanistan-opium-us-operation/
Drug War? American Troops Are Protecting Afghan Opium. U.S. Occupation Leads to All-Time High Heroin Productionhttp://www.globalresearch.ca/drug-war-american-troops-are-protecting-afg...
It is not War On Drugs, it is War BY Drugs. And same thing goes about the terror, War BY Terror instead of War On Terror.
I say we declare War on Freedom and Prosperity, because we always get more of what we declare war on.
They hate us for our freedom...so who keeps taking freedom away from us? Those who exempt themselves from insider trading, insurance mandates and numerous other freedoms and exemptions they give themselves at our expense.
CIA drug money. Never gonna quit happening.
http://www.amazon.com/Compromised-Clinton-Bush-Terry-Reed/dp/1561712493
Compromised is the true story of Hillery/Bill Clinton’s political sell-out to the CIA.
Clinton’s unbridled political ambitions and his campaign pledge to create "jobs for Arkansans" led him to compromise his ideals in exchange for CIA support in his bid for the Presidency.
He permitted the "Agency" to use Arkansas factories to make untraceable weapons and he allowed CIA contract agents to train Contra pilots on rural airstrips in support of the war in Nicaragua – effectively evading the Congressional ban on military aid to the Contras.
This expose unfolds through the eyewitness account of Terry Reed, a former CIA asset whose patriotism transformed him into a liability when he refused to turn a blind eye to the Agency’s drug trafficking. While helping the CIA set up its secret "black" operations, he unwittingly compromised his family’s safety, ultimately forcing them to become fugitives. Realizing that Reed witnessed the making of a counterfeit President and knew too much about its drug operations, the Agency set out to destroy him and his family.
This Arkansas-CIA connection became Clinton’s darkest secret – a secret he shared by then Vice-President Bush, who himself was compromised by his involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal. Their shared guilt kept them silent and tied their hands as they faced off in the 1992 Presidential election with neither mentioning Iran-Contra.
The Justice Departments of Reagan, Bush – and now Clinton – have orchestrated an ongoing cover-up of the Arkansas-CIA connection, which has gone undetected for eight years with Bill Clinton its major beneficiary. Clinton's reward for this Faustian pact? The White House.
Niether of the Clintons have, or ever had, 'ideals'
Clintons were even lower than this. When Bill was gov, they milked blood from prisoners in Ark prisons. Health Management Associates (big company) had the contract. They were required by law to screen all blood. They never did. This blood then got into the healthcare system for transfusions, etc. Much of it was shipped outside the USA to the UK, Europe and Japan.
Dozens if not hundreds of people contracted AIDS and other sicknesses from this very tainted blood. As uaual, the Clintons never faced the music for that one. This is how evil and money hungry they are.
http://www.wnd.com/2005/10/33137/
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/09/04/arkansas-bloodsuckers-the-clinton...
"Drug wars". The CIAs way of eliminating the competition.
Depends on what you mean by "losing."
Another USA foreign policy blunder. I really have no idea why we could not have gotten Bin Laden without toppling the Taliban(who successfully stopped production of opium poppy.) Oh wait... It was never about getting Bin Laden in the first place.
The Taliban made the mistake of rejecting Bush/UNOCAL proposals for a oil/gas pipeline through Afghanistan. 9/11 was used as an excuse to whack them for their insolence.
'War Is A Racket', written by America's most decorated soldier, two time recipient of the Medal of Honor, Marine Major General, Smedley Butler.
Af/Pak is profitable for its opium.
We honest people are being scammed by the nasty nazionists, all for their filthy lucre.
Understanding Capitalism via the drug trade; the essence of a free market.
This is Saviano’s sagacious heresy. For decades, writing on global mafia has presumed a Manichean schism between cops and robbers; our healthy society and law enforcement on one hand battling organised crime on the other (with occasional erring by the former). But the trail blazed by Saviano and very few others demolishes that account, backed by every recent development in Mexico’s narco-nightmare, including and especially the escape, again, of the heir to Escobar’s mantle, Joaquin “Chapo” Guzman, from supposedly maximum-security jail. Narco cartels like Guzman’s are not adversaries of global capitalism, nor even pastiches of it; they are integral to – and pioneers of – the free market. They are its role model.
Read about it here....
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/dec/26/man-who-exposed-lie-war-on-...
Now ask Jesus if he likes what the essence of capitalism is : the money changers...
"We make the rules; our inner codes; to break the laws of the land. We are Capitalism as we serve the markets; freely; to exploit the impoverished many for the benefit of the few who rule."
“Capitalism,” says Saviano, “needs the criminal syndicates and criminal markets… This is the most difficult thing to communicate. People – even people observing organised crime – tend to overlook this, insisting upon a separation between the black market and the legal market. It’s the mentality that leads people in Europe and the USA to think of a mafioso who goes to jail as a mobster, a gangster. But he’s not, he’s a businessman, and his business, the black market, has become the biggest market in the world.”
“If it’s not your mother or father… then the boss does. Or the boss’s secretary… the oncologist… the waiters who will work the wedding… If not them, then the town councillor who just approved the new pedestrian zones.” Within three-score pages he has stripped bare the system whereby – and why – the white powder got up their noses. “Cocaine,” he concludes, applying the logic of business school, “is a safe asset. Cocaine is an anticyclical asset. Cocaine is the asset that fears neither resource shortages nor market inflation.” Of course, cocaine capitalism – as brazenly as any other commodity, possibly more so – has “both feet firmly planted in poverty… [and] unskilled labour, a sea of interchangeable subjects, that perpetuates a system of exploitation of the many and enrichment of the few”.
“Cocaine becomes a product like gold or oil,” he adds in conversation, “but more economically potent than gold or oil. With these other commodities, if you don’t have access to mines or wells, it’s hard to break into the market. With cocaine, no. The territory is farmed by desperate peasants, from whose product you can accumulate huge quantities of capital and cash in very little time.
“If you’re selling diamonds, you have to get them authenticated, licensed – cocaine, no. Whatever you have, whatever the quality, you can sell it immediately. You are in perfect synthesis with the everyday life and ethos of the global markets – and the ignorance of politicians in the west to understand this is staggering. The European world, the American world, don’t understand these forces, they don’t have the will to understand narco-traffic.”
“I think the Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-American world is infused by a kind of Calvinist positivism; people want to believe in the health of their society,” says Saviano, even though “what this all means is that, for instance, the City of London is a far more important centre for laundering criminal money than the Cayman Islands”.
“The law is supposed to be for everybody,” Saviano tells me, “but the rules are made by the so-called men of honour. This is how narco-traffic explains the world, by embracing all the contradictions of the world. To succeed in narco-traffic, you apply the rules to break the law. And today, any big corporation can only succeed if it adopts the same principle – if its rules demand that it break the law.”
Smedley butler, is he on the simpsons?
Naw. Not famous like that. Just a guy who figured it out, and had the decency to tell us about it. To paraphrase, war is a racket.
Professor Alfred McCoy wrote about the CIA's connection in the heroin trade...as far back as 1971. Nothing has changed, not a damn thing, except we've spent a trillion dollars since then (ahem) 'fighting' the drug trade. In that time, our police forces have become like invading armies, armed to the teeth, and imbued with a sense that their paymasters are somehow beneath them, and that they are unnaccountable for their actions, which all too often result in innocent deaths, committed under the rubric of 'saving' them from inanimate objects.
Drug prohibiton was sired from a combination of racism, bigotry, eugenics and just plain ol' powerlust on the part of bureaucrats who would never have the power they enjoy were it not for this insane crusade.
HL Mencken was right: "The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it's good-bye to the Bill of Rights." And that is just how these would-be masters want it. For that's just what has happened.
afganistan was once a buddhist country
filthy muslims destroyed it
they killed the beauty of afganistan with wicked koran trash
afganistans population do not deserved to be destroyed by wicked koran
you guys attack israel but why no one of you attack muslims?
arabs and muslims stole afagnistan and no one cares
but israel is attacked every day
in reality isreal is a sign of freedom
i will not discuss about that israel is owned by rich ashkenazi jew families
but at least they kicked out muslims and treat the rest of them as how muslims desrve to be treatened
you shuld leant from israel how to treat muslims
kick them out from europe
klick them out from america
kick them out from asia
kick them out from everywhere
drown them in the sea
give back afganistan you stupid muslims
make afganistan buddhist again
America was once a Christian country.
We have no power to correct the past, but we can surely stop ongoing evil committed in our name.
Israeli-Neocons are treasonous criminals. They conspired with the nation of Israel's formal institutions in an attack on America. They klled 3K of our citizens in that attack.
9/11 shows our entire MSM, military, intelligence, police, academia and Hollywood to be under the control of Israeli-Neocons, as any who have not yet signed a 9/11 Truth petition are at least complicit in that treason, and far too many guilty of assisting it before the fact.
That is not a light or metaphoric use of the word 'treason', rather in its strict constitutional meaning, and 'complicit' in a strict dictionary usage :
complicit (k?m-pl?s??t)?
In the US of A at the end of 2015, while waiting for the next Israeli-Neocon FF attack, the world's leaders should begin to contemplate when it is prudent to sign a 9/11 Truth petition. It is going to make a much larger effect in their futures than generally recognized.
The tipping point is nigh, and there are only 3 possible positions here at the end of 2015 : intentionally ignorant, tool or fool. You cannot legitimately have doubts, the big questions are entirely settled to scientific and engineering standards. We have some very excellent citizens who did this investigation, a model of open source investigation and intelligence analysis.
So cleaning that up is the issue for the year.
What do we need government for?
"if there would be no taliban, there would be no poppy."
"400k people peak-seasonally employed in poppy industry, in plain sight of an afghan military base."
"bribery and corruption rule the deep afghan state."
"The video you are trying to watch cannot be viewed from your current country or location"
Soooooo,,, why did ZH post this?
And the reason the usa/cia invaded Afghanistan was to kick out the Talibin who had shut down much of the production.
You can use a VPN like IPVanish to appear like you are in the UK or anywhere else to watch it. UK works for me.
You can grow, but you'll have to ban cash. The Turkish dictator will show you how to trade it for silver.
I'm noticing an increasing amount of bullshit on zerohedge recently. What is happening?
Fuck the War On (politically incorrect) Drugs.
You want to make the world a better place?
Annointing your local DEA agents with a liberal dose of tar and feathers would be a great place to start.
And on a related note:
The article references a video.... but all I see is the following message:
"The video you are trying to watch cannot be viewed from your current country or location"
Another day in 'The Land Of The Free'.
Fuck me with a jar of crunchy peanut butter and pass the pea gravel.
.
Come to my country, kill my people, and make yourself the enemy, by whatever flag you fly under.
Get ready.
1620, 1776 and all that.
Bull shit, the T-ban wouldn't fund the CIA black opps so they killed opium.
Ain't that right, brother. The CIA, Mossad and Mi6 want that Af/Pak opium war.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLV4_xaYynY
All along the watch tower. That's what soldiers do...
'...There are many here among us...this is not our fate...let us not talk falsely now...'.
Jimmy, the paratrooper. Look to the sky, up above, our better selves.
Who writes this bullshit? The Taliban almost stopped the crop over there dead in the water. USA invades and the crop production has never been higher.
Organic poppies whipped out then Monsanto came after the war and made everything GMO-grrrrrrreat!
Fuck this fucking bullshit - just napalm the damn poppy fields and fucking be done with those damn rag heads!
Ya know, much like new bags of bugs that eat starch and churn out oil, it is only a matter of time before some enterprising lab rat pulls the genes that make opiates out of the poppy and grafts them onto some other plant. Say an invasive species, such as Japanese Knotweed (currently conquering Great Britain and eating people's houses).
http://www.theguardian.com/money/2012/sep/08/japanese-knotweed-house-sale
The new plant will bring a whole new perspective on "home-grown" LOL. In short any monopoly on something plants can be taught to manufacture won't last long in this new world of cheap CRISPR technology. It is sort of like IBM and the seven dwarves back in 1970 when the first microprocessors started showing up...
Precursor To The Global Crime Syndicate: The 19th-Century Opium Trade
http://winteractionables.com/?p=28983
There has been an epidemic of opiate related addictions of overdoses in America since our soldiers went into Afghanistan.
And I got news for you, 'the authorities' ain't losing.
There is no drug war as long as someone is making billions on the heorine coming out of that country. A couple of years ago. then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton siad that 90% of the worlds heroine came out of Kandahar province. Well Hillary, we have the best army in the world in that asshole of a country, why not burn the poppy fields down and teach the sand jockey's to grow food rather than drugs? Answer? Some cartel is making billions on selling death. Is it the Taliban, CIA, others?
As long as there is money to be made, whatever army is there will protect those daily shipments and someone will continue laughing all the way to the bank. Wolrd leaders just love talking out of both sides of their mouth, but when you come right down to it, money talks and bullshit walks.
<-- Its becuz America wants its presence ther all the time
America is addicted to drugs
cabalA$$LickerLiarAddictObamma is promoting drug addiction
all values go outta window