Afghanistan: The World’s Largest Opium Producer
Global
Research, June 25, 2017
159
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Opium
is used to produce heroin and other illicit opioids.
In his book titled “The Politics of
Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade,” Alfred McCoy documented CIA and US government complicity in drugs
trafficking at the highest official levels.
It continues today in Asia, Europe, the
Middle East, South and Central America, facilitating the global supply of
illicit drugs.
Peter
Dale Scott explained
“(s)ince at least 1950 there has been a
global CIA-drug connection operating more or less continuously” to this day.
“The global drug connection is not just
a lateral connection between CIA field operatives and their drug-trafficking
contacts.”
“It is more significantly a global
financial complex of hot money uniting prominent business, financial and
government, as well as underworld figures,” a sort of “indirect empire
(operating alongside) existing government.”
Heroin and other illicit drugs produce
hundreds of billions of dollars in annual revenues – a US government-supported
bonanza for corrupt regime officials in various countries, the CIA, organized
crime and Western financial institutions, heavily involved in money laundering.
America is one of numerous countries
involved, the most harmful and disturbing because of its imperial power and
global reach, influencing or affecting virtually everything worldwide.
The CIA relies on involvement in drugs
trafficking for a significant amount of its revenues.
Pre-9/11, Afghanistan under Taliban
rule eradicated 94% of opium production according to UN estimates, one of
various reasons why Bush/Cheney launched naked aggression on the country in
October 2001.
One of the objectives was increasing
opium production. Afghanistan was transformed into the world’s largest producer
– at one point growing more than total global demand, now accounting for at
least 90%.
Only a tiny fraction of what’s produced
remains in-country, the rest supplying demand worldwide.
Illicit drugs trafficking is big business
– complicit governments cashing in along with money-laundering Wall Street and
other big banks, traffickers, and rogue agencies like the CIA.
As long as Afghanistan remains occupied
under US-installed puppet rule, opium production will flourish, vitally needed
eradication steps ruled out.
RT interviewed Layla Haidari, founder of a Kabul “Mother” organization, helping
drug addicts.
“Every day, it is getting worse, not
better,” she said. “It’s politics. The ministries, the politicians…want poppy
cultivation to continue.
Corrupt Afghan officials like their
counterparts elsewhere profit hugely from illicit trafficking, not about to
give up a good thing.
Nor will the CIA and major Western
banks end a lucrative source of revenues – the human cost of these drugs of no
consequence in their decision-making.
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The
original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright ©
Stephen Lendman, Global Research, 2017
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