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Intro­duc­tion: Access­ing infor­ma­tion from the vitally impor­tant recent (in 2009) book Invis­i­ble His­tory: Afghanistan’s Untold Story, this inter­view with the book’s authors sets forth covert his­tory of the Cold War and the Soviet Union’s inva­sion of Afghanistan. (Sub­se­quent inter­views with the authors will present more infor­ma­tion from this land­mark book, bring­ing the Afghan tragedy up to date, through the Soviet with­drawal, the birth of the Tal­iban and Al Qaeda, the 9/11 attacks and the ongo­ing U.S. mil­i­tary involve­ment in that nation.) NB: this descrip­tion fea­tures text excerpts that illus­trate the major points the authors make in this inter­view. The text is not tran­scribed from the interview.

Begin­ning with an obser­va­tion by the for­mer British ambas­sador to Uzbek­istan, the pro­gram sets forth the deci­sive role of offi­cials of the cur­rent gov­ern­ment of Afghanistan in the unpar­al­leled nar­cotics traf­fic com­ing from that coun­try. Under their stew­ard­ship, and with mis­use of funds from the coali­tion nations, Afghanistan has “pro­gressed” from a pro­ducer and exporter of raw opium to a pro­ducer and exporter of mas­sive amounts of refined heroin.

Fur­ther devel­op­ing the fun­da­men­tal role of the nar­cotics traf­fic in the Afghan wars of the last sev­eral decades, the authors then high­light the piv­otal posi­tion of the BCCI in that country’s dope trade. They also set ana­lyze the role of the BCCI in the covert oper­a­tions of the1980’s.

Among the points devel­oped by the authors is the fact that Pak­istan has its own impe­r­ial vision of extend­ing its influ­ence through­out Cen­tral Asia and the Mid­dle East. The same Tal­iban that our fight­ing forces are com­bat­ing in Afghanistan is the pri­mary vehi­cle for this “Pak­istani Imperialism!”

The pro­gram then turns to a notable event occurred in April of 2001. Ahmed Shah Mas­soud, leader of the North­ern Alliance, warned the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment that Al-Qaeda was plan­ning a major ter­ror inci­dent. The Bush admin­is­tra­tion (obvi­ously) took no effec­tive notice.

The dire polit­i­cal and eco­nomic con­se­quences of U.S. pol­icy in Afghanistan have impli­ca­tions for the very sur­vival of the United States itself. Note the many state­ments Mr. Emory has made in the past about the Bush admin­is­tra­tion being a front for what he calls the Under­ground Reich. Recent events and those of years to come may well bear wit­ness to the engi­neer intend­ing to “wreck the train,” in many ways and with great, tragic success.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Fore­shad­ow­ing of the authors’ pre­scrip­tion of what they feel is nec­es­sary for the United States to survive–a turn­ing away from this country’s man­i­fes­ta­tion of the con­cept of per­pet­ual war; a com­par­i­son of Amer­ica dur­ing the lat­ter part of the sec­ond Bush II admin­is­tra­tion with the fall of the Roman Empire; an overview of the polit­i­cal dynam­ics of the Pash­tun tribe in the pol­i­tics and his­tory of Afghanistan and Pak­istan. (Lis­ten­ers inter­ested in the authors’ work are encour­aged to check out FTR #‘s 678, 680, 685.)

1. Begin­ning with an obser­va­tion by the for­mer British ambas­sador to Uzbek­istan, the pro­gram sets forth the deci­sive role of offi­cials of the cur­rent gov­ern­ment of Afghanistan in the unpar­al­leled nar­cotics traf­fic com­ing from that country.

“. . . A July 2007 arti­cle in the Daily Mail by Britain’s for­mer ambas­sador to Uzbek­istan, Craig Mur­ray, explained how the West’s short-sighted favoritism for North­ern Alliance war­lords acts against the war’s stated objec­ties of root­ing out ter­ror, instead turn­ing Afghanistan from a nere grower of opium into the biggest heroin exporter in the world: ‘It [Afghanistan] has suc­ceeded in what our inter­na­tional aid efforts urge every devel­op­ing coun­try to do. Afghanistan has gone into man­u­fac­tur­ing and ‘value-added’ oper­a­tions. It now exports not opium, but heroin. Opium is con­verted into heroin on an indus­trial scale, not in kitchens but in fac­to­ries. Mil­lions of the gal­lons of the chem­i­cals needed for this process are shiped into Afghanistan by tanker. The tankers and bulk opium lor­ries on the way to fac­to­ries share roads, improved by Amer­i­can aid, with NATO troops.’

‘How could this have hap­pened, on this scale?’ Mur­ray asked. ‘The answer is sim­ple. The four largest play­ers in the heroin busi­ness are all senior mem­bers of the Afghan gov­ern­ment. The gov­ern­ment that our sol­diers are fight­ing and dying to protect.’

Murray’s tes­ti­mony might seem like a con­tra­dic­tion, given Britain and America’s much-publicized efforts to destroy Afghanistan’s opium crop. But a care­ful look at the oper­a­tion reveals that the pro­gram tar­gets largely Pash­tun farm­ers in the South near Kandahar–stoking the flames of Pash­tun anger–while inad­ver­tently pro­tect­ing north­ern war­lords like Gen. Rashid Dos­tum, who as head of the Afghan armed forces oper­ates around the inter­dic­tion with­out interference.

Mur­ray writes, ‘Dos­tum is an Uzbek, and heroin passes over the Friend­ship Bridge from Afghanistan to Uzbek­istan, where it is taken over by Pres­i­dent Islam Karimov’s peo­ple. It is then shipped up the rail­way line, in bales of cot­ton, to St. Peters­burg and Riga. The heroin Jeeps run from Gen­eral Dos­tum to Pres­i­dent Kari­mov. The UK, United States and Ger­many have all invested large sums in donat­ing the most sophis­ti­cated detec­tion and screen­ing equip­ment to the Uzbek cus­toms cen­ter at Ter­mez to stop the heroin com­ing through. But the con­voys of Jeeps run­ning between Dos­tum and Kari­mov are sim­ply waved around the side of the facility.’”

Invis­i­ble His­tory: Afghanistan’s Untold Story by Paul Fitzger­ald and Eliz­a­beth Gould; City Lights Books [SC]; Copy­right 2009 by Paul Fitzger­ald and Eliz­a­beth Gould; ISBN-13: 978–0-87286–494-8; pp. 295–296.

2. Fur­ther devel­op­ing the fun­da­men­tal role of the nar­cotics traf­fic in the Afghan wars of the last sev­eral decades, the authors high­light the piv­otal posi­tion of the BCCI in that country’s dope trade. They also set ana­lyze the role of the BCCI in the covert oper­a­tions of the 1980’s.

“. . . ‘If you want to move arms around, you don’t want your bankers to talk about it,’ jour­nal­ist Peter Tru­ell told film­maker Samira Goetschel. ‘Yet, if you’re involved in those kinds of activ­i­ties you need access to finance. You want to be unreg­u­lated and you’ve also got to make for­eign exchange trans­ac­tions and so on, and you want the peo­ple who are doing that for you to be com­plicit with you and not tell the authorieis any­thing and so on. And if you’re look­ing for that kind of Ser­vice, BCCI was pretty much top of the list.’

Fol­low­ing Ronald Reagan’s elec­tion in the fall of 1980, French intel­li­gence chief Alexan­dre de Marenches had vis­ited with an old friend from World War II, future CIA direc­tor William Casey, and sug­gested bring­ing the drug oper­a­tion for Afghanistan inside the CIA. Code-naming it Oper­a­tion Mos­quito, to ‘sting’ the Rus­sians, de Marenches sug­gested stim­u­lat­ing the nar­cotics trade near Soviet bases to addict Russ­ian sol­diers as the French had done in Indo-China dur­ing the colo­nial period, and the Viet­cong had done to Amer­i­cans dur­ing their war there. Accord­ing to de Mare­hc­nes’ biog­ra­phy, Casey like the plan but insisted that since it could never be accom­plished in secret, the United States could not be directly involved.

Already pri­va­tized by inde­pen­dent, ad hoc intel­li­gence groups, in order to avoid laws, and–in Brian Crozier’s words–‘recent leg­is­la­tion (as in the U.S.) or because polit­i­cal cir­cum­stances made such inquiries dif­fi­cult or poten­tially embar­rass­ing,’ within a year of ini­ti­at­ing U.S. sup­port for the war, Afghan heroin began flood­ing the mar­kets of Europe and Amer­ica. ‘Before 1979, Pak­istan was not a major exporter of drugs. . . In 1984, it was esti­mated that 80 per­cent of all the heroin con­sumed in Britain and 30 per­cent of the Amer­i­can imports came from Pak­istan. Financed through a little-known bank, the Bank of Credit and Com­merce Inter­na­tional, BCCI acted as a go-between for Wash­ing­ton, Hong Kong, Peshawar, and Switzer­land, laun­der­ing money for drugs and facil­i­tat­ing arms sales to Nicaraguan Con­tras and Afghan mujahideen groups. Although only a small part of the Iran-Contra hear­ings that found Reagan’s national secu­rity advi­sors Robert ‘Bud’ McFar­lane, Admi­ral John Poindex­ter, and Colonel Oliver North guilty of ille­gal acts, its role as a financ­ing tool for the Afghan mujahideen was never fully dis­closed. But accord­ing to John K. Coo­ley, the CIA used BCCI as a pay­mas­ter, exten­sively financ­ing mujahid­e­den oper­a­tions through its numer­ous branches through­out the world:

‘The CIA took the unusual step of flatly deny­ing the media reports about CIA-BCCI links. The denial back­fired. The British media and Amer­i­can inves­tiga­tive reporters for ABC News and oth­ers pub­lished a series of dam­ag­ing rev­e­la­tions about CIA accounts in Lon­don branches of BCCI, chiefly the Cromwell Road branch. . . . The Finan­cial Times reported that Pakistan’s finance min­is­ter had con­firmed that the CIA used BCCI branches in Pak­istan to chan­nel money, pre­sum­ably through the ISI, to the Afghan jihad. Fur­ther it dis­closed the CIA and other agen­cies used ‘slush funds’ at BCCI branches to pay off Pak­istani army offi­cers and Afghan resis­tance leaders.’

Derided as the ‘Bank of Crooks and Crim­i­nals,’ BCCI was so suc­cess­ful at bro­ker­ing the CIA’s off-the-books oper­a­tion in Afghanistan that it cre­ated an entire new class of pri­va­tized inter­na­tional ter­ror­ist, capa­ble of strik­ing around the world at will. Jack Blum, for­mer spe­cial coun­sel to the 1987 ‘Kerry’ Sen­ate For­eign Rela­tions Sub­com­mit­tee on Ter­ror­ism, Nar­cotics and Inter­na­tional Rela­tions, told film­maker Samira Goetschel, ‘They did money laun­der­ing, they financed arms trad­ing, financed smug­gling oper­a­tions, assisted var­i­ous peo­ple in loot­ing their coun­tries. . . . The CIA used them, the Mosad used them, var­i­ous Arab intel­li­gence agen­cies used them, the Rus­sians used them, the British used them, every­body used them. They were won­der­ful; some­times they traded infor­ma­tion from one intel­li­gence agency to the other. If it wasn’t as seri­ous and as deadly as it turned out to be, it would be damn comical.’

With BCCI secretly tasked with facil­i­tat­ing the resources to the CIA’s covert arms pro­gram, by 1987, the amount of drugs reach­ing the world from their oper­a­tions would stag­ger the world’s law enforce­ment agen­cies. Accord­ing to Blum, ‘The amounts of heroin were stag­ger­ing; the amounts of money involved were stag­ger­ing. There was a seizure of a ship off the coast of Turkey that had come from the Makran coast of Pak­istan, that had twelve tons–metric tons–of heroin and heroin deriv­a­tives on it. That is such a start­ingly large num­ber, it’s sort of like the world’s sup­ply for a year.’”

Ibid.; pp. 199–201.

3. Among the points set forth by the authors is the fact that Pak­istan has its own impe­r­ial vision of extend­ing its influ­ence through­out Cen­tral Asia and the Mid­dle East. The same Tal­iban that our fight­ing forces are com­bat­ing in Afghanistan is the pri­mary vehi­cle for this “Pak­istani Imperialism!”

“. . . As doc­u­mented by noted Afghan expert Selig Har­ri­son, ‘Gen­eral Zia spoke to me about expand­ing Pakistan’s sphere of influ­ence to con­trol Afghanistan, then Uzbek­istan and Tajik­istan and then Iran and Turkey.’ Never the indige­nous, Afghan fight­ing force that they claimed to be, by 2001 they had meta­mor­pho­sized into a well-financed, agenda-driven van­guard of the Pak­istani mil­i­tary. Never just ‘recruits’ from the madras­sas (Mus­lim the­o­log­i­cal schools), from the begin­ning the Tal­iban were on the pay­roll of the ISI (Inter-Services Intel­li­gence, the intel­li­gence wing of the Pak­istani gov­ern­ment) and ‘mak­ing a liv­ing our of terrorism.’”

Ibid.; p. 308.

4. A notable event occurred in April of 2001. Ahmed Shah Mas­soud, leader of the North­ern Alliance, warned the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment that Al-Qaeda was plan­ning a major ter­ror inci­dent. The Bush admin­is­tra­tion took no effec­tive notice.

“. . . In April, Mas­soud addressed the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment and warned that Al Qaeda was plan­ning an impor­tant ter­ror­ist attack. . . .”

Ibid.; p.244.

5. The dire polit­i­cal and eco­nomic con­se­quences of U.S. pol­icy in Afghanistan have impli­ca­tions for the very sur­vival of the United States itself. Note the many state­ments Mr. Emory has made in the past about the Bush admin­is­tra­tion being a front for what he calls the Under­ground Reich. Recent events and those of years to come may well bear wit­ness to the engi­neer intend­ing to “wreck the train,” in many ways and with great, tragic success.

“. . . If Pres­i­dent Obama is to safe Afghanistan and the United States itself from the impend­ing tip­ping point, it would be wise to fol­low the advice of David Walker, comp­trol­ler gen­eral of the United States. Warn­ing that the United States gov­ern­ment was par­al­lel­ing the decline and fall of the Roman empire, Walker described the coun­try in an August 2007 inter­view with the Finan­cial Times as being on a ”burn­ing plat­form,’ of unsus­tain­able poli­cies and prac­tices with fis­cal deficits, chronic health­care under-funding, immi­gra­tion and over­seas com­mit­ments threat­en­ing a cri­sis if action is not taken soon.’”

Ibid.; p. 325.

6. Fore­shad­ow­ing the fourth and final inter­view in this series, the authors indi­cate what they think is needed at a fun­da­men­tal level in order to turn the U.S. around.

“. . . Finally, reopen the national debate on U.S. iden­tity and its future, a debate that was silenced on Decem­ber 7. 1941, when the Japan­ese attacked Pearl Har­bor. Resump­tion of this debate was over­ruled by the cre­ation of the Cold War and the national secu­rity state and edited out of the script by the events of 9/11. If we are to restore our nation to health, this debate must begin now. Enlist the peo­ple from within the insti­tu­tions of gov­ern­ment who best under­stand this to be the prob­lem. There are many who have the courage to help. Milt Bear­den said, ‘We bet­ter at some point feel it’s not unpa­tri­otic or weak to say why did these guys do it? That debate or dalogue has not yet begun in this coun­try. We’re just hav­ing a war against ter­ror­ism whether it takes us to AFghanistan or it takes to Iraq rather than say­ing ‘time out–why did those guys do it? . . . If we pro­ceed on a straight line from where we are today [we’ll] wind up fight­ing the birthrate of the Islamic world.’ Andrew Bace­vich, for­mer West Pointer, now pro­fes­sor of inter­na­tional rela­tions at Boston Uni­ver­sity, has said, ‘If you’re like me and you’re quite skep­ti­cal about this impe­r­ial project, the stresses imposed on the mil­i­tary and the obvi­ous lim­its of our power sim­ply serve to empha­size the imper­a­tive of rethink­ing our role in the world so we can back away from this unsus­tain­able notion of global hegemony.

The United States is in a fight for its life–not because of what hap­pened on that Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001, but because of the way Amer­ica responded to it. That response was at once wildly exag­ger­ated, dan­ger­ous­lly reck­less and, in the end, inef­fec­tive, putting more con­trol into the hands of the very same peo­ple who had allowed it to happen. . .”

Ibid.; p. 326.