[evgeny]

Reports circulating in the Kremlin today state that Prime Minister Putin has ordered Russian military forces to prepare to confront American military forces in Afghanistan over what Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov warns is the “greatest threat to International peace and security”, Afghanistan’s thriving drug trade supported by the US and NATO.

Not being reported to the American people about the Afghanistan war is that it has nothing to do with their being protected from terrorists, but rather it involves the billions of dollars gained for many of the West’s top intelligence agencies (mainly the CIA) from the heroin produced in this region (90% of World’s total) that by 2001 the Taliban had virtually eliminated.

http://beforeitsnews.com/news/74/104/Ru ... th_US.html

[efarmer]

Evgeny,
This is another humdinger article from the mysterious Sorcha Faal who
posts from a guy's website in Virginia, USA or at least used to.

Could you enlighten us as to how Sorcha is connected to the top rung at the Kremlin
and how they just can't seem to keep her from making them spill their guts and
posting it on the internet?

Do you think the Kremlin will move to Virginia soon so they are more in the know
on what is going on?

[evgeny]

U.S. Army Col. Paul Calbos walks through a field of opium poppies in southern Afghanistan.

Afghanistan is now the world’s largest exporter of heroin, and the opium used to produce it, supplying 87 percent of the world market.
The United Nations has announced that opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has soared and is expected to increase by 59% in 2006. The production of opium is estimated to have increased by 49% in relation to 2005.

The Western media in chorus blame the Taliban and the warlords. The Bush administration is said to be committed to curbing the Afghan drug trade: "The US is the main backer of a huge drive to rid Afghanistan of opium... "

Yet in a bitter irony, US military presence has served to restore rather than eradicate the drug trade.

What the reports fail to acknowledge is that the Taliban government was instrumental in implementing a successful drug eradication program, with the support and collaboration of the UN.

Implemented in 2000-2001, the Taliban's drug eradication program led to a 94 percent decline in opium cultivation. In 2001, according to UN figures, opium production had fallen to 185 tons. Immediately following the October 2001 US led invasion, production increased dramatically, regaining its historical levels.

The Vienna based UN Office on Drugs and Crime estimates that the 2006 harvest will be of the order of 6,100 tonnes, 33 times its production levels in 2001 under the Taliban government (3200 % increase in 5 years).

Cultivation in 2006 reached a record 165,000 hectares compared with 104,000 in 2005 and 7,606 in 2001 under the Taliban

The United Nations has announced that opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has soared and is expected to increase by 59% in 2006. The production of opium is estimated to have increased by 49% in relation to 2005.

Multibillion dollar trade

According to the UN, Afghanistan supplies in 2006 some 92 percent of the world's supply of opium, which is used to make heroin.

The UN estimates that for 2006, the contribution of the drug trade to the Afghan economy is of the order of 2.7 billion. What it fails to mention is the fact that more than 95 percent of the revenues generated by this lucrative contraband accrues to business syndicates, organized crime and banking and financial institutions. A very small percentage accrues to farmers and traders in the producing country.

Narcotics: Second to Oil and the Arms Trade

The foregoing estimates are consistent with the UN's assessment concerning the size and magnitude of the global drug trade.

The Afghan trade in opiates (92 percent of total World production of opiates) constitutes a large share of the worldwide annual turnover of narcotics, which was estimated by the United Nations to be of the order of $400-500 billion.

Based on 2003 figures, drug trafficking constitutes "the third biggest global commodity in cash terms after oil and the arms trade." (The Independent, 29 February 2004).

Afghanistan and Colombia are the largest drug producing economies in the world, which feed a flourishing criminal economy. These countries are heavily militarized. The drug trade is protected. Amply documented the CIA has played a central role in the development of both the Latin American and Asian drug triangles.

The IMF estimated global money laundering to be between 590 billion and 1.5 trillion dollars a year, representing 2-5 percent of global GDP. (Asian Banker, 15 August 2003). A large share of global money laundering as estimated by the IMF is linked to the trade in narcotics.

Legal Business and Illicit Trade are Intertwined

There are powerful business and financial interests behind narcotics. From this standpoint, geopolitical and military control over the drug routes is as strategic as oil and oil pipelines.

Moreover, the above figures including those on money laundering, confirm that the bulk of the revenues associated with the global trade in narcotics are not appropriated by terrorist groups and warlords, as suggested by the UNODC report. In the case of Afghanistan, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime estimates that a mere 2.7 billion accrues as revenue within Afghanistan. According to the US State department "Afghanistan drug profits support the Taliban and their terrorism efforts against the United States, its allies and the Afghan government." (statement, the House Appropriations foreign operations, export financing and related programs subcommittee. September 12, 2006)

However, what distinguishes narcotics from legal commodity trade is that narcotics constitutes a major source of wealth formation not only for organized crime but also for the US intelligence apparatus, which increasingly constitutes a powerful actor in the spheres of finance and banking. This relationship has been documented by several studies including the writings of Alfred McCoy. (Drug Fallout: the CIA's Forty Year Complicity in the Narcotics Trade. The Progressive, 1 August 1997).

In other words, intelligence agencies, powerful business, drug traders and organized crime are competing for the strategic control over the heroin routes. A large share of this multi-billion dollar revenues of narcotics are deposited in the Western banking system. Most of the large international banks together with their affiliates in the offshore banking havens launder large amounts of narco-dollars.

This trade can only prosper if the main actors involved in narcotics have "political friends in high places." Legal and illegal undertakings are increasingly intertwined, the dividing line between "businesspeople" and criminals is blurred. In turn, the relationship among criminals, politicians and members of the intelligence establishment has tainted the structures of the state and the role of its institutions including the Military.

[evgeny]

CIA, Heroin Still Rule Day in Afghanistan
“U.S. Army planes leave Afghanistan carrying coffins empty of bodies, but filled with drugs.”

http://www.rawa.org/temp/runews/2008/11 ... istan.html


Afghan opium kills 100,000 people every year worldwide -- more than any other drug -- and the opiate heroin kills five times as many people in NATO countries each year than the eight-year total of NATO troops killed in Afghan combat, the United Nations said Wednesday.

[americandream]

Sounds like the sort of gobshite Sorcha Faal peddles.

Reports circulating in the Kremlin today state that Prime Minister Putin has ordered Russian military forces to prepare to confront American military forces in Afghanistan over what Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov warns is the “greatest threat to International peace and security”, Afghanistan’s thriving drug trade supported by the US and NATO.

Not being reported to the American people about the Afghanistan war is that it has nothing to do with their being protected from terrorists, but rather it involves the billions of dollars gained for many of the West’s top intelligence agencies (mainly the CIA) from the heroin produced in this region (90% of World’s total) that by 2001 the Taliban had virtually eliminated.

http://beforeitsnews.com/news/74/104/Ru ... th_US.html

[EnergyUnlimited]

Opium is going to be produced in Afghanistan or somewhere else.
So eradication of its production in Afghanistan can do little to disturb its trade.
It will go to Burma, Cambodia or Laos or anywhere else.

It is far more important to realize where a lot if not majority of opium or heroin is consumed.
And it is consumed in Russia.

[Roy]

Sorcha Faal is not what you could call a credible source. At least in my experience.

On the other hand, it's fairly normal, at least in this country, for the military to be prepared for war, and to run simulations as well as plan for action against other world powers or members of the 'axis of evil'. So it wouldn't surprise me if Russian military had a plan for potential conflict with the US.

Also,

Implemented in 2000-2001, the Taliban's drug eradication program led to a 94 percent decline in opium cultivation. In 2001, according to UN figures, opium production had fallen to 185 tons. Immediately following the October 2001 US led invasion, production increased dramatically, regaining its historical levels.

The Vienna based UN Office on Drugs and Crime estimates that the 2006 harvest will be of the order of 6,100 tonnes, 33 times its production levels in 2001 under the Taliban government (3200 % increase in 5 years).

Cultivation in 2006 reached a record 165,000 hectares compared with 104,000 in 2005 and 7,606 in 2001 under the Taliban

The above is pretty much acknowledged to be the truth and I have seen this info reported many times from many sources, both here and abroad.

I'm not a chemist, but isn't opium an ingredient in many pharmaceutical drugs used here in the US? Especially those drugs most popular among the abusing or 'pillhead' crowd?

[evgeny]

The U.S. Government Is the Biggest Drug Dealer in the World!

While the U.S. federal government has been waging a phony and hypocritical "war on drugs" as an easy way to increase repression in inner cities and confiscate millions of dollars in private assets through unconstitutional forfeiture laws in order to fund its burgeoning police state, it has also been an active participant in the illegal drug trade, using public resources to bring heroin and cocaine into American inner cities at least since the 1960's.

Sound like paranoia? In fact, this information has been confirmed by scholars and researchers throughout the past three decades. Any honest scholar that has researched the issue will tell you that this is the truth, but you will find very little information about it in the mainstream mass media. The most recent scandal involved the Central Intelligence Agency selling crack cocaine in South Central Los Angeles in order to fund the U.S. covert war against the people of Nicaragua.

http://motherjones.com/politics/1998/08 ... -and-drugs

The Contras, Cocaine, and Covert Operations

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB2/nsaebb2.htm

According to expert data, over the past eight years because of the use only of the Afghan heroin world has lost almost a million young people - people who have not yet reached the age of 35 years

[TWilliam]

Something else to consider is that opium-derived medicines are still some of the most widely legally prescribed painkillers in the world, so it's not like opium production is going to cease. Also, the seed pods are quite popular in dried floral arrangements...

[efarmer]

I assume the Russians, having also been in Afghanistan, are well aware of the corrupting nature of lucrative drug trades, are aware of US and their own problems with them, as well to how futile it is to go to war about drugs, unless the motive is equipping and making profit on the forces on opposition instead of winning the war. The key to this is picking small adversaries in difficult terrain without any national government to hold accountable or spoil the endless war on drugs.

I think high placed sources in the Kremlin will leak this to Sorcha Faal soon and she will provide it to her Western associates to put on the internet.

[Pretorian]

Also, the seed pods are quite popular in dried floral arrangements...

yes, its also a great way to keep any amount of opium you want legally.