U.N.: Afghan heroin Production UP 61% last year

[revelarts]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2102158/Heroin-production-Afghanistan-RISEN-61.html

http://www.libertariannews.org/2012/02/16/afghan-heroin-production-up-61-in-the-past-year-alone/



United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon admitted today heroin production in Afghanistan has risen 61 per cent in the past year despite billions of pounds being spent by Britain and others to crack down on the Taliban.

But the Taliban was able to cut herion production by 90%+ . without international troops.

And it seems only 5% of that money is staying in country. So the Taliban warlords and Karsi's brothers and friends are not the people reaping them major bennfit of our troops protecting the poppy fields.


UP 61 freaking %

well i guess drugs are one way to change hearts and minds.
God help us.

[logroller]

I think they're putting their efforts into reducing the transfer of RAW opium, not the pasteurized heroin.

[revelarts]

i dunno Log,
the U.S. Military Protects the Poppy fields.
http://www.libertariannews.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/troopguardsopium.jpg

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2011/1011/Afghanistan-still-world-s-top-opium-supplier-despite-10-years-of-US-led-war

...After 10 years of US (http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/United+States)-led war in Afghanistan (http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Afghanistan), the country remains the world’s leading opium supplier, responsible for 90 percent of the global supply, according to the United Nations (http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/United+Nations).
Related stories


Afghanistan opium crop blight sends drug prices soaring (http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2010/0930/Afghanistan-opium-crop-blight-sends-drug-prices-soaring)
Sign in As Afghan war hits 10-year mark, falling land prices signal fear over future (http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2011/1007/As-Afghan-war-hits-10-year-mark-falling-land-prices-signal-fear-over-future)
What Afghans think of the war: 'Why are you Americans here?' (http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2011/0909/What-Afghans-think-of-the-war-Why-are-you-Americans-here)





The latest Afghanistan Opium Survey by the UN (http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/United+Nations) Office of Drugs and Crime found that opium cultivation rose by 7 percent in 2011 compared with last year. Opium production also climbed 61 percent this year.
UN officials say insecurity and high prices made it difficult to stop the growth of the crop, despite improved eradication efforts.
... (http://www.csmonitor.com/Photo-Galleries/In-Pictures/Far-from-home-US-soldiers-serving-in-Afghanistan)


“The picture as sketched within the opium survey is one that is to be taken very seriously,” said Jean-Luc Lemahieu (http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Jean-Luc+Lemahieu), head of the UNODC in Afghanistan. “We have an increase, an increase, which is limited compared to the increase in prices. The situation could have been much worse if it was not for the actions taken” by Afghan and international partners.
Higher prices, more production

A crop blight (http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2010/0930/Afghanistan-opium-crop-blight-sends-drug-prices-soaring) destroyed much of Afghanistan’s opium harvest last year causing a decrease in opium production and creating a simultaneous spike in prices. Higher prices led to much speculation that more Afghan farmers would turn to the crop this year, which has indeed proved to be the case.
Poppy farmers interviewed by the UN cited high prices and economic hardship as their main reason for growing opium.
The Taliban (http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/The+Taliban) and other insurgent groups rely on collecting taxes from opium farmers to finance their operations. Though not the main source of their revenue, the opium harvest plays an important role in funding the insurgency. UN officials estimate that 10 percent of opium harvest proceeds reach the Taliban, while another 70 percent is unaccounted for, likely absorbed by government bribes and corruption. Opium accounts for 9 percent of the country's GDP, according to UN estimates. ...

[ConHog]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2102158/Heroin-production-Afghanistan-RISEN-61.html

http://www.libertariannews.org/2012/02/16/afghan-heroin-production-up-61-in-the-past-year-alone/




But the Taliban was able to cut herion production by 90%+ . without international troops.

And it seems only 5% of that money is staying in country. So the Taliban warlords and Karsi's brothers and friends are not the people reaping them major bennfit of our troops protecting the poppy fields.


UP 61 freaking %

well i guess drugs are one way to change hearts and minds.
God help us.



we are not over there to be an internal police force.

[logroller]

Sounds like the blight has just been devastating to their opium yield. :eek: Upside: There's no need to protect a dead a field.:thumb:

So, the million dollar question, where'd this mysterious blight come from? Maybe it's just bad luck; but for whom?

[jimnyc]

Is it a 61% increase in opium or is the increase in heroin? I'm aware that the majority is made into morphine and heroin, but the title of this post is a bit misleading, unless we're to assume that all the opium is converted to heroin.

Also, and I'm not saying the photo is 'shopped', but could be. Additionally, there are times when growing opium is legal, and for all I know, this picture of a US soldier could be one protecting a legal operation?

[fj1200]

Also, and I'm not saying the photo is 'shopped', but could be. Additionally, there are times when growing opium is legal, and for all I know, this picture of a US soldier could be one protecting a legal operation?

Or he walked past a field and someone took a picture.

[jimnyc]

Or he walked past a field and someone took a picture.

Hmmmm..... sometimes the easiest explanations are forgotten.

At any rate, simply growing the poppy fields is not against the law. It's what is done with it afterwards that matters. I don't see an issue even if a soldier protected someone's crop - but I would see a problem if they were protecting a building that was making heroin. Either way, I don't think the US should be protecting or destroying what farmers grow there.

[revelarts]

look Jim I understand wanting to bend over to give the military and the gov't the benny of the doubt BUT No, the poppys are for illegal drugs even the "legal" fields the troops are protecting.


<iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/N_54LJMwG4E?feature=player_embedded" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" width="640"></iframe>

if it's for "legal" drugs why the sorrow etc.?

[jimnyc]

look Jim I understand wanting to bend over to give the military and the gov't the benny of the doubt BUT No, the poppys are for illegal drugs even the "legal" fields the troops are protecting.

if it's for "legal" drugs why the sorrow etc.?

No doubt that the majority is for heroin, as I already stated, I just don't believe the 61% was in reference to heroin in total but for other things as well. And I think that video just explained why the military "tolerates" the crops. I'm not happy about ANY of our troops being used in such a manner, illegal or not. But I think if they destroyed them, the entire country would implode. It sounds like they are probably protecting the citizens and farmers from the Taliban and indirectly protecting the crops as a result. I don't think their main focus is supporting the drug trade though.

And what happens if we don't protect the farmers and citizens? Or what happens if we just up and bail? What if we increase troops to go after the Taliban?

Is your answer to allow the crops to be destroyed and kill their 3rd world economy? Remove the troops and bring them all home, and give the country back to the Taliban? I don't have the answers, just asking your opinion.

[ConHog]

Good Lord Rev, it's called dealing with the lesser of two evils.

The ONLY way we can keep the Taliban out is by allowing some poppy production. If that dries up the people will want to go back to the taliban, so guess what the taliban is doing? That's right, they are destroying the poppy fields, so we've decided that it is our best interest to protect the fields.

Does that mean we condone the production of heroin? No of course not.

[revelarts]

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — When it's harvest time in the poppy fields of Kandahar, dust-covered Taliban fighters pull up on their motorbikes to collect a 10 percent tax on the crop. Afghan police arrive in Ford Ranger pickups — bought with U.S. aid money — and demand their cut of the cash in exchange for promises to skip the farms during annual eradication.
Then, usually late one afternoon, a drug trafficker will roll up in his Toyota Land Cruiser with black-tinted windows and send a footman to pay the farmers in cash. The farmers never see the boss, but they suspect that he's a local powerbroker who has ties to the U.S.-backed Afghan government.
Everyone wants a piece of the action, said farmer Abdul Satar, a thin man with rough hands who tends about half an acre of poppy just south of Kandahar. "There is no one to complain to," he said, sitting in the shade of an orange tree. "Most of the government officials are involved."
Afghanistan produces more than 90 percent of the world's opium, which was worth some $3.4 billion to Afghan exporters last year. For a cut of that, Afghan officials open their highways to opium and heroin trafficking, allow public land to be used for growing opium poppies and protect drug dealers...



Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2009/05/10/67723/afghan-drug-trade-thrives-with.html#storylink=cpy



http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2009/05/10/67723/afghan-drug-trade-thrives-with.html

It's pretty much common knowledge that a portion of the CIA and military worked the huge drug trade in Vietnam Loas and Cambodia etc during the Viet Nam war.

the same type of thing is going on now in Afghanistan.

Billions are being made and the Taliban warlords don't have it.

[ConHog]

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2009/05/10/67723/afghan-drug-trade-thrives-with.html

It's pretty much common knowledge that a portion of the CIA and military worked the huge drug trade in Vietnam Loas and Cambodia etc during the Viet Nam war.

the same type of thing is going on now in Afghanistan.

Billions are being made and the Taliban warlords don't have it.


some loose cannons do not equal official action there bud.

[revelarts]

...Is your answer to allow the crops to be destroyed and kill their 3rd world economy? Remove the troops and bring them all home, and give the country back to the Taliban? I don't have the answers, just asking your opinion.

I don't have happy any answers either. The Taliban terrible but It's not our country. Our gov't and troops need to leave. Our drug problems are our drug problems. But the taliban did nearly stop the drug poppy growth in 2001.

[ConHog]

I don't have happy any answers either. The Taliban terrible but It's not our country. Our gov't and troops need to leave. Our drug problems are our drug problems. But the taliban did nearly stop the drug poppy growth in 2001.

you believe that Rev? The Taliban didn't stop the production of poppy, they merely made sure they controlled the production of poppy, and gave the people a niggardly amount of money which was better than they would have if we didn't let them grow poppy now.

[revelarts]

some loose cannons do not equal official action there bud.

How high up does it have to go?

I've often wondered about the name "Poppy" Bush, hmmm former head of the CIA too ...hmmm.
Probably nothing i could post to convince you but the infos out there.

[ConHog]

How high up does it have to go?

I've often wondered about the name "Poppy" Bush, hmmm former head of the CIA too ...hmmm.
Probably nothing i could post to convince you but the infos out there.

"proof" of anything is out there if you look hard enough and already believe.

http://sangeetjass.hubpages.com/hub/Most-remarkable-proof-that-aliens-exist

[revelarts]

"proof" of anything is out there if you look hard enough and already believe.

http://sangeetjass.hubpages.com/hub/Most-remarkable-proof-that-aliens-exist

I've posted news stories of Billions of Drug dollars KNOWINGLY being laundered through most of the major banks.
I'm not talking Aliens. Con.
Drugs are Big biz. do you think that many High up Mexico's gov't or Ecuador's might be corrupted by Drug cartels?

There are MANY former DEA FBI CIA and military peple that have written about the darkside of U.S. gov'ts complicity in the international drug trade.
It's not really a debated issue.

[Dilloduck]

I'd love to know what our cut is.

[logroller]

I've posted news stories of Billions of Drug dollars KNOWINGLY being laundered through most of the major banks.
I'm not talking Aliens. Con.
Drugs are Big biz. do you think that many High up Mexico's gov't or Ecuador's might be corrupted by Drug cartels?

There are MANY former DEA FBI CIA and military peple that have written about the darkside of U.S. gov'ts complicity in the international drug trade.
It's not really a debated issue.

I understand the allegations you put forth, and accept them as necessary. I think you underestimate the domestic interest in international affairs. Like ch said (or was it jim)-- lesser of two evils. Your solution: Let the international drug trade rally unfettered, giving organized crime free reign? Political isolationism just isn't feasible in today's global economy.

[revelarts]

I understand the allegations you put forth, and accept them as necessary. I think you underestimate the domestic interest in international affairs. Like ch said (or was it jim)-- lesser of two evils. Your solution: Let the international drug trade rally unfettered, giving organized crime free reign? Political isolationism just isn't feasible in today's global economy.

I'm not sure what your saying Log. Burning the fields or protecting the fields? is that what you mean?
What's the lesser of 2 evils in what i'm talking about.
Seriously I'm missing where your going.

[logroller]

I'm not sure what your saying Log. Burning the fields or protecting the fields? is that what you mean?
What's the lesser of 2 evils in what i'm talking about.
Seriously I'm missing where your going.

What are you talking about? Seemingly, we are subsidizing heroin production; but there's a political reason for doing so-- fighting terrorism. Afghanistan isn't a country with a lot of infrastructure. If we shut down their opium production, lacking other opportunities, the people are more susceptible to extremism and accepting terrorist organizations. We are trying to teach them other farming practices, but education takes time. The terrorists know this; they fight education too.

[revelarts]

What are you talking about? Seemingly, we are subsidizing heroin production; but there's a political reason for doing so-- fighting terrorism. Afghanistan isn't a country with a lot of infrastructure. If we shut down their opium production, lacking other opportunities, the people are more susceptible to extremism and accepting terrorist organizations. We are trying to teach them other farming practices, but education takes time. The terrorists know this; they fight education too.

Ah so you don't think there's a part of the U.S. gov't that wants the cheap opium?
you think we are just making the best of it but really trying to get rid of it, if i understand you right.
well, I guess we disagree.
I think that the poppy production is just a way some official U.S. gov't and corporate players want it. Some high up players want the drugs to keep flowing. Though it's not "official" policy. They've adjusted the program and made excuses to protect the fields "for the good of the people" etc..
We've lost this war, the Taliban are not going anywhere, poppies or not. We'll eventually leave to, the sooner the better.




<object style="height: 390px; width: 640px">


</object><object style="height: 390px; width: 640px"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/eMiyuCDVwzE?version=3&feature=player_detailpage"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/eMiyuCDVwzE?version=3&feature=player_detailpage" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="640" height="360"></object>


http://www.corbettreport.com/the-cia-and-the-drug-trade-eyeopener-preview/

[Dilloduck]

Opium is like gold only it doesn't weigh as much. I bet you could buy information and all sorts of other good stuff with it.
Spoils of war ya know.

[Toro]

Good to see the market working. Gotta earn hard currency somehow.

The unfortunate thing is that almost none of the money goes to the farmers. It goes mainly to the warlords and the Taliban.

[logroller]

Ah so you don't think there's a part of the U.S. gov't that wants the cheap opium?
you think we are just making the best of it but really trying to get rid of it, if i understand you right.
well, I guess we disagree.
I think that the poppy production is just a way some official U.S. gov't and corporate players want it. Some high up players want the drugs to keep flowing. Though it's not "official" policy. They've adjusted the program and made excuses to protect the fields "for the good of the people" etc..
We've lost this war, the Taliban are not going anywhere, poppies or not. We'll eventually leave to, the sooner the better.
<object style="height: 390px; width: 640px"></object>L/ (http://www.corbettreport.com/the-cia-and-the-drug-trade-eyeopener-preview/)

Hmm. We obviously disagree. There are a great number of people operating in there, teaching the people, building infrastructure and helping to rebuild a society ravaged by decades of war. The soldiers keep the peace so that others can accomplish the, perhaps grandios, mission. It's no easy task; but I wouldn't consider a lost cause. Of course you'll have some opportunists, but thats what funds the mission.

[Dilloduck]

Opportunists funding the mission ? You're damn straight. And lining people's pockets too. Did you really think this war wasn't about money?

[logroller]

Opportunists funding the mission ? You're damn straight. And lining people's pockets too. Did you really think this war wasn't about money?

More specifically, war is about leveraging resources. But that's not limited to war; it's one of the core tenets of society.

[revelarts]

Good to see the market working. Gotta earn hard currency somehow.

The unfortunate thing is that almost none of the money goes to the farmers. It goes mainly to the warlords and the Taliban.

Acutually the the Warlords don't get most of the money either. most of the money is made after the warlords. with the middlemen between Afghan and the strets of other counties about 75% of the money.
The warlords are not sitting on Billions of dollars.

[revelarts]

http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2012/05/22/the-real-lords-of-afghan-poppy-fields-heroin-distribution-hubs/ (http://www.debatepolicy.com/---)


The Real Lords of Afghan Poppy Fields & Heroin Distribution Hubs Tuesday, 22. May 2012
Facts, Myths, Smugglers, and the International Dudes http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/0522_poppies1.pngYesterday this so-not-news news made the headlines: Central Asia Key to Afghanistan Heroin Smuggling – UNODC (http://www.eurasianet.org/node/65425). The headline was followed by these so-not-accurate descriptions and statements [emphasis mine]:
A new report by the United Nations drug agency sheds light on the nuts and bolts of narcotics transit from Afghanistan through Central Asia, highlighting the former Soviet republics’ lackluster efforts at interdiction.
…
The 106-page report (http://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/Studies/Afghanistan_northern_route_2012_web.pdf) by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), released this month, describes how smugglers traffic heroin and opium from Afghanistan, the world’s largest producer, to Russia, the world’s largest consumer. Ninety tons of highly pure heroin, roughly a quarter of the substance exiting Afghanistan, passes through Central Asia annually. Yet in 2010 authorities in the region seized less than 3 percent of it. And despite international efforts to help, that number keeps falling.
…
You see, these kinds of reports never reveal the so-called culprit smugglers. And somehow these reports always get the role of the so-called international efforts backwards. What do I mean? How do you describe the situation when the smugglers are high-level international dudes, the large part of the international efforts are to increase not decrease the smuggling exerted by the same smuggling international dudes, and the international cosmetic show put on in pretense of international efforts to decrease smuggling are performed by the same international smuggler dudes who’s efforts are to increase the smugglings?
http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/0522_poppies2.pngI know. I know it all sounds convoluted and highly complicated, but actually it is quite simple. I’ll get to that later, so let’s check out a few other so-not-true pieces of information from this so-not-news report:
Central Asia’s entrenched corruption makes the region a perfect smuggling route, says the report. Senior officials are complicit in the trade, or at least take bribes to look the other way, especially in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. A lack of cooperation among neighbors also offers a boon to traffickers.
…
Let’s hold it right there. By entrenched corruption they mean the ruling regimes and its forces. They somehow find it irrelevant to mention the fact that these regimes are hand-picked, sustained and managed by the international dudes. Let me give you a few hints (http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=53206), starting with how we pick-feed-sustain the ‘entrenched corruption’ referred to in this so-called report:
In 2007, the Pentagon provided some 30 million dollars in a variety of aid programmes to the Bakiyev regime – mainly as compensation for access to the Manas Air Base, according to the report. That was roughly six times what it spent on democracy and civil society programmes. The Pentagon also reportedly awarded exclusive fuelling contracts – now under investigation both in Bishkek and in Congress – for U.S. operations at the base to companies in which Bakiyev’s cronies and son had substantial interests, contributing to the perception in Kyrgyzstan that Washington was backing a corrupt and increasingly authoritarian regime.
…
Do I really need to expand upon this? I don’t think so. But, remember, the report sites those neighbor countries as well, so let’s get a few facts (http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=53206) straight here
Washington has provided military and police aid at various times to the Central Asian states – Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan – virtually since their creation after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991…By the end of the decade, aid had expanded in most of the five countries, as CENTCOM – whose writ runs from Egypt to China’s southwestern border – sent Special Operations Forces (SOF) to train local troops in counterinsurgency in increasingly restive Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbek and Kazakh militaries were taking part in NATO exercises…
…
http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/0522_poppies3.pngAre you with me so far? Good. Let’s proceed. In January 2012 I wrote a brief piece (http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2012/01/30/bfp-exclusive-u-s-transit-hub-base-in-kyrgyzstan-for-afghan-heroin/) on Manas-US Air Base in Kyrgyzstan
Since 2001 Kyrgyzstan has been hosting the Transit Center at Manas (formerly Manas Air Base) as the transit point for US military personnel coming and going from Afghanistan, and pays 200 million for continued use of the facilities. For years the base has been riddled with scandals and fiascos.
…
And I quoted (http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2012/01/30/bfp-exclusive-u-s-transit-hub-base-in-kyrgyzstan-for-afghan-heroin/) well researched and supported statements and reports on the real purpose of Manas:
Last year, Peter Dale Scott wrote a lengthy article (http://japanfocus.org/-Peter_Dale-Scott/3384) outlining how US intervention in Kyrgyzstan, in the name of protecting its strategic air base, has led to the destabilization of Kyrgyz politics and to a drastic increase in the flow of drugs through the country:
“…that there is a deep force behind drug, intelligence, and jihadi activity, would be consistent with the legacy of the CIA’s earlier interventions in Afghanistan, Laos, and Burma, and with America’s overall responsibility for the huge increases in global drug trafficking since World War II. It is important to understand that the more than doubling of Afghan opium drug production since the U.S. invasion of 2001 merely replicates the massive drug increases in Burma, Thailand, and Laos between the late 1940s and the 1970s. These countries also only became major sources of supply in the international drug traffic as a result of CIA assistance (after the French, in the case of Laos) to what would otherwise have been only local traffickers.
As early as 2001 Kyrgyzstan’s location had made it a focal point for transnational trafficking groups. According to a U.S. Library of Congress Report of 2002,
Kyrgyzstan has become a primary center of all aspects of the narcotics industry: manufacture, sale, and drug trafficking. Kyrgyzstan’s location adjacent to major routes across the Tajik mountains from Afghanistan combines with ineffectual domestic smuggling controls to attract figures from what a Kyrgyz newspaper report characterized as “an international organization uniting an unprecedentedly wide circle of members in the United States, Romania, Brazil, Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan….These are no half-literate Tajik-Afghan drug runners, but professionals who have passed through a probation period in the mafia clans of the world narcotics system….”
The Badakhshan drug corridor is a matter of urgent concern for Russia. The Afghan opiates entering Russia via Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, the chief smuggling route, come from Badakhshan and other northeastern provinces. The reductions of the last three years in Afghan drug production, while inadequate overall, have minimally impacted the northeast, allowing opiate imports into Russia to continue to grow. Meanwhile the much-touted clearing of opium poppy from the Afghan northern provinces has in some cases simply seen a switch “from opium poppies to another illegal crop: cannabis, the herb from which marijuana and hashish are derived.”
As a result, according to U.N. officials, Afghanistan is now also the world’s biggest producer of hashish (another drug inundating Russia).67 This has added to the flow of drugs up the Badakhshan-Tajik-Kyrgyz corridor. In short, the political skewing of America’s Afghan anti-drug policies is a significant reason for the major drug problems faced by Russia today.
…
In July 2010 I wrote (http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2010/07/18/another-%E2%80%98viable%E2%80%99-candidate-bites-the-dust-%E2%80%A6/) a lengthy investigative piece at Boiling Frogs Post on Kyrgyzstan, Bakiyev, Mina Corp and the connected US operatives:
When we talk about the strategic importance of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and other ‘stans’ we are not talking only about strategic in the sense of traditional resources-oil, we also talk about ‘narcotics resources’ (http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=19314):
At the moment the stock of pure heroin in Afghanistan is estimated at slightly below 3,000 tons, and the revenues of Afghan drug suppliers reach around $3 bn annually. The international drug mafia earns at least $100 bn annually on heroin from Afghanistan, the money nourishing organized crime not only in Afghanistan but also across Central Asia – in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.
And no, the real lords of these resources are not the farmers in Afghanistan or the mules transporting them. The real lords of heroin enterprises happen to be those who’ve been ‘groomed and planted’ to rule the source and transit nations, and the ones who rule those rulers who reside in the United States and other Western countries:
The revenues generated by the drug business are distributed among the criminal groups controlling various segments of the supply chain linking poppy farms to narcotics consumers. While Afghan poppy growers are enduring extreme poverty, the owners of the fields mostly reside in the US, Great Britain, and other Western democracies.
…
Now, let’s go back to that so-not-factual report on Central Asia’s role in Heroin (http://www.eurasianet.org/node/65425):
Kyrgyzstan is the preferred route because of its porous, 870-kilometer border with Tajikistan (two-thirds of which has never been formally demarcated) and the country’s “widespread corruption.” Osh, near that border, is a “drug consolidation point,” and the stomping ground for criminal gangs that played a role in 2010’s ethnic violence. Kyrgyzstan’s ongoing instability directly and indirectly facilitates trafficking, says the report.
…
The report makes Tajikistan the fall guy, more accurately, the fall country. You know why? Let me give you a hint:
Although Tajikistan has consistently stood in the geostrategic shadow of its perennially unstable southern neighbour, Afghanistan, and lacks the political and military clout of its fellow post-Soviet Central Asian neighbours, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, it is a state of both regional and global import. Situated at a key crossroad within the Eurasian landmass, Tajikistan has the potential to play a strong role in shaping the economic development and trading opportunities for a number of state and non-state actors within Eurasia. With increased investment into its transport infrastructure, Tajikistan could provide a vital link between East Asia and the Persian Gulf, on the one hand, and between Russia and India, on the other. In effect, it could become an important pivot point in regional and global trade.
…
Iranian interest and investment in Tajikistan has continued to increase in recent months, with Iran signing a number of economic agreements with the Tajik government, including a plan to build an industrial town in the country. Although only in the formative stages, it is hoped that this project will eventually lead to the construction of fifty industrial enterprises including aluminium, cotton and fruit processing plants at an estimated cost of over $2 billion.
In addition to these investments, Iranian political elites have also sought to increase economic ties between Iran’s eastern provinces, north-western Afghanistan and Tajikistan. They have promoted cooperation in the areas of water management, electricity distribution, rail development and deregulation in visa and customs procedures.
...
Right. The foreign smuggler dudes who happen to be the same international dudes in charge of Central Asia’s heroin corridor don’t like Tajikistan who happens to like Iran. That makes Tajikistan a good fall country for a not-so-true report.
On the other hand, the largest heroin transport operation network in Central Asia-think military bases, think air-bases, think semi-NATO bases … just keep thinking, goes totally absent in this so-not-factual report written probably by an arm of the same international dudes in question;-)
With that I’ll present Boiling Frogs Post exclusive video report, the EyeOpener, with James Corbett on Kyrgyzstan’s Manas Operation: