The world's got a heroin problem, and US cell phone companies are part of it. Thanks in part to top-notch cellular communications, Osama bin Laden is hauling in cash with which to buy expensive and sophisticated (presumably nuclear) weapons.
Opium production is skyrocketing. A report released by the Bush administration reveals that Afghanistan's crop is now at a record high, with nearly 6000 tons of opium produced annually. With failed efforts to eradicate growing and production, Taliban-supported Afghani growers are sourcing 90% of the world's heroin.
According to former NATO supreme allied commander General James L Jones, it's the drug runners who usually engage in combat with US and NATO forces in Afghanistan. "They make sure the roads stay open, and they get to where they want to go, whether it's through Pakistan, Iran, up through Russia, or all the known trade routes."
A recent World Bank report, as well as a United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime document, indicates that Afghani heroin traffickers are also chums with the country’s top government and political leaders. These are folks close to Afghan president Hamid Karzai.
The reports point to the Afghan Interior Ministry, noting it actually protects traffickers. "At lower levels," the UN report says, "payments are made to police. At higher levels, provincial and district police appointments help traffickers exercise control."
Although the United States ostensibly laments such news, American companies continue to help the drug runners. According to Ahmed Rashid, US firms have sold, installed, and are maintaining, elaborate cell phone networks in Afghanistan. But, the profits made by infrastructure providers may be just the tip of the iceberg.
A look at the maps reveal most of these multi-million dollar radio systems are located along key drug caravan routes between cities in Afghanistan and its neighbors. Cell phones let the Taliban communicate freely with drug connections in Turkey, and thence into Europe.
One of Rashid's authoritative
books (
Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia) was published in 2000, well before bin Laden destroyed the World Trade Center twin towers in Manhattan. In it, Rashid revealed the links between the Bush family, Big Oil, and the Taliban. Since then, American analysts in the wake of the attacks have referred to Rashid’s books extensively. We should heed Rashid. He knows of what he speaks.
Recall that the Central Intelligence Agency ran drugs in Viet Nam and Cambodia. Likewise, drug-running CIA dirtbags made money from the Iran-Contra deals in Nicaragua in the mid-1980s (most of the records pertaining to these illegal transactions were conveniently destroyed). It’s known the CIA also leveraged heroin money to finance its campaign against the Russians during their occupation of Afghanistan.
Is there any reason to believe the CIA isn't involved in the Afghan drug trade? Why haven’t US forces shut down the cell phone networks, or at least monitored telecomm traffic to zero in on drug traders and destroy the shipments?
Maybe we really don’t want to disrupt the flow of heroin. Afghan president Karzai collaborated with the Taliban in the past, with CIA support. According to the Saudi Arabian newspaper
Al-Watan: “Karzai has been a CIA covert operator since the 1980s.”
Make no mistake. Taliban leader Mullah Omar and his pal bin Laden are raking it in. A brick of heroin sells in New York City for nearly $100,000. There are literally millions of addicts in New York and around the globe. You do the math. Be sure to use the word billions in your calculations.
Someone’s getting filthy rich, here and abroad. Is this George Bush the Elder’s vision when he spoke of a New World Order?
The US always has a war on something. A war on poverty. A war on crime. A war on terror. A war on drugs. Great hyperbole. In reality, however, there seems to be a disconnect, and I, for one, am suspicious.
