| | |  Editorials | Issues | February 2009 
Obama's Surge and the Afghan Heroin Trade
 UPI Asia
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| | A Taliban militant stands with an AK-47 rifle, as a farmer collects resin from opium poppies in Helmand. (Associated Press) | |
Bangalore, India — As America surges in Afghanistan, it has created its own stirring in the heroin trade, which has come back to life after NATO forces took over the country from the Taliban. The Taliban, who enforced not only Sharia law but other stringent Islamic conditions on the people as well, ensured that poppy was not cultivated at all. Though this infuriated ordinary Afghans, the Taliban enforced it ruthlessly. This also ensured the vanquishing of the drug mafia run by drug lords like General Dostum, Ishmeil Khan, etc.
When the International Security Assistance Force took over, it opened the floodgates of freedom of the media and personal liberty, and also the freedom to grow poppy. Initially, it ensured that ordinary Afghans were happy with the money that came from this trade. This time, the Taliban did not abolish this trade, but cleverly used it to subvert the central rule of Karzai as desired by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
The United States winked at this as long it was supporting the Pakistani army and ISI and didn’t affect its global interest in the painkiller market in Europe. ISI thinks that subverting the Indian economy through heroin and other poppy-derived drugs is as effective as a terrorist attack against India. As the global prices for heroin crash in the European market, the CIA is waking up to face the challenge of protecting its market in Europe and the United States.
The connection between ISI and the CIA through drug money is not much known, since ISI is intricately linked to jihadi terrorism, which gets more media space. ISI cannot survive as an institution with this “oxygen” from the drug trade.
Again, the hawala system in Afghanistan is controlled by poppy-generated illegal money. One finds that the hawala centers and drug routes are the same. Ninety-three percent of the world’s illegal opium is grown in Afghanistan. The world's intelligence agencies and drug lords have their meeting point in the small but prosperous town of Baramcha in Helmand, which grows 70% of Afghanistan’s poppy. The GDP of Afghanistan is US$7.8 billion, while the illegal opium trade is worth more than US$5 billion!!! Now one can understand how important drug trade is to Afghanistan, to the jihadis, to ISI and to the United States, where the illegal street trade is worth US$200 billion! The Taliban are able to completely ignore or reduce taxes on non-opium trade in the areas they control, as long as one pays 10% tax on the opium produced, thereby winning the hearts and minds of ordinary Afghan farmers.
Then what is the game plan of the Obama administration in inviting the following people for his inauguration: Gul Agha Sherzai, Dr. Ashraff Ghani Ahmedzai, Ali Ahmed Jalali, and Abudullah Abdullah? Why is he trying to replace Karzai with one of these warlords? These guys are not angels. The reason is drug money, which made even Zilmay Khalizad salivate for the job.
The world must look closely at the U.S. surge by looking at its deployment.
1. Is it preventing the cultivation of poppy or acting as its protector, like UK's 2nd Para?
2. Is it shutting down the labs and closing the drug trail for precursor chemicals?
3. Are drone attacks inside Pakistan being stopped, as demanded by Turkey and the Pakistani army?
4. Is drug money being routed through the hawala system of Peshawar or Herat?
5. Who is allowed to take over in Helmand?
6. What role Turkey plays in the scheme of things will also be pointer to the future geopolitical landscape, since it has recognized the Durand line.
7. a) Is ISI being allowed to use drug money to rekindle the agenda to form a new state called Khalistan for the Sikh diaspora, since the ex-ISI boss Lt. Gen. Javed Nasir heads the Sikhs of Pakistan? He violently opposed Benazir Bhutto's distaste for fomenting Sikh extremism in India and scuttling the Punjabi and Indian economies.
b) Fake Indian currency notes are being printed and distributed through the Indian criminal organization D-Company, the International Sikh Youth Federation, the extremist group Harkat-ul-Jihad-al Islami (HuJI) in Bangladesh, together with Indian operatives in Kerala and Hyderabad. Recruitment for training these operatives is done in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
c) The Mumbai attacks can be seen as a sort of disruption of the Indian tourism industry, along with the attacks in Jaipur and Bangalore and the attempted ones in Goa.
d) The disruption of Indian cricket, especially the Indian Premier League Season 2, which is a money-spinner for the Indian economy.
Indian moneybags can be made vulnerable to blackmail through drug money and hawala exposure. This suits China, since it does not like the rejuvenation of India’s national psyche after the drubbing China gave it during the Sino-Indian war in 1962. |
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