Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

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Russia Alleges that NATO Aiding Afghan Heroin Production

Com­ment: the refusal by the Marines to destroy the crop should not be sur­pris­ing in and of itself. The impov­er­ished Afghan farm­ers depend on it for income and in the “bat­tle for hearts and minds,” that is an impor­tant con­sid­er­a­tion. Con­sid­er­ing that oth­er options are avail­able, such as pur­chas­ing the opi­um to make med­ical mor­phine, and that evi­dence exists that Pres­i­dent Karza­i’s cab­i­net are involved with the trade, the NATO denial is to be tak­en with a grain of salt.

In addi­tion, the hero­ic work of Daniel Hop­sick­er has indi­cat­ed that ele­ments of U.S. and West­ern intel­li­gence con­tin­ue to prof­it from the drug trade.

“Rus­sia: U.S. Aid­ing Afghan Drug Trade”; Radio Free Europe/Radio Lib­er­ty; 4/5/2010.

Rus­sia has accused the Unit­ed States of “con­niv­ing” with Afghan drug pro­duc­ers by not destroy­ing opi­um crops as U.S. troops advance in Hel­mand Province, one of the major opi­um grow­ing regions.

The alle­ga­tion, which came in a state­ment from the Russ­ian For­eign Min­istry, was the sec­ond time this week that Moscow has crit­i­cized the West over the opi­um issue. NATO reject­ed the charge and said Rus­sia could help by pro­vid­ing more troops to com­bat the insur­gency.

U.S. Marines in Hel­mand Province have told vil­lagers that they will not destroy this year’s crops. In the Tal­iban strong­hold of Mar­jah, which was cap­tured by U.S. troops last month, the U.S. offered to pay pop­py farm­ers to destroy their own crops and pro­vide seed for them to plant oth­er crops next year.

Afghanistan pro­duces over 90 per­cent of the world’s opi­um.

Discussion

One comment for “Russia Alleges that NATO Aiding Afghan Heroin Production”

  1. Con­text for this page:

    From May 2001:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/20/world/taliban-s-ban-on-poppy-a-success-us-aides-say.html

    Tal­iban’s Ban On Pop­py A Suc­cess, U.S. Aides Say
    By BARBARA CROSSETTE
    Pub­lished: May 20, 2001

    The first Amer­i­can nar­cotics experts to go to Afghanistan under Tal­iban rule have con­clud­ed that the move­men­t’s ban on opi­um-pop­py cul­ti­va­tion appears to have wiped out the world’s largest crop in less than a year, offi­cials said today.

    The Amer­i­can find­ings con­firm ear­li­er reports from the Unit­ed Nations drug con­trol pro­gram that Afghanistan, which sup­plied about three-quar­ters of the world’s opi­um and most of the hero­in reach­ing Europe, had end­ed pop­py plant­i­ng in one sea­son.

    But the erad­i­ca­tion of pop­pies has come at a ter­ri­ble cost to farm­ing fam­i­lies, and experts say it will not be known until the fall plant­i­ng sea­son begins whether the Tal­iban can con­tin­ue to enforce it.

    ”It appears that the ban has tak­en effect,” said Steven Cas­teel, assis­tant admin­is­tra­tor for intel­li­gence at the Drug Enforce­ment Admin­is­tra­tion in Wash­ing­ton.

    The find­ings came in part from a Pak­istan-based agent of the admin­is­tra­tion who was one of the two Amer­i­cans on the team just returned from eight days in the pop­py-grow­ing areas of Afghanistan.

    Posted by R. Wilson | July 7, 2012, 6:49 pm

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