US benefits from ‘drug trafficking’ in Afghanistan

I mentioned Kazai's brother and the Shah's sister among drug traffickers, but forgot the Northern Alliance and the Columbian drugs flown into the US by the CIA during the Iran-Contra affair. It's particularly hard for me to think or talk well before 9AM. Iran's Press TV, 11/24/12:

The U.S. has a “long history” of benefiting from drug trafficking from the Vietnam War era to the ongoing war in Afghanistan, says a Pennsylvania-based political analyst and writer.

“There is a consistent pattern of the U.S.A, the Pentagon, the CIA benefiting from drug trafficking because there’s a lot of money” in it, said Linh Dinh in a phone interview with the U.S. Desk on Saturday.

“When the Taliban was in charge before the U.S. invasion [of Afghanistan], opium production was very down. Now, it’s very up. So, that’s the real scandal here”, added Dinh.

The Pentagon oversees the U.S. military’s operations to curb the spread of Afghanistan’s drug money from a compound in Kabul called Camp Integrity, according to a recent report by The Wired’s Danger Room. The camp, the report says, houses the headquarters of the private security company formerly known as Blackwater.

The U.S.-led war on Afghanistan began more than a decade ago and has become the longest-running war in U.S. history. After more than a decade of occupation, Afghanistan is seeing a substantial rise in opium poppy cultivation.

On Tuesday Nov. 20, United Nations officials warned against an “alarming” trend in the increase of poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, saying it rose 18 percent between 2011 and 2012.



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