The worst narco-state in history

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In 2014 Yury Fedotov, head of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), said of Afghanistan, "without more meaningful assistance, this country may continue to evolve into a full-fledged narco-state.”
That same month, the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction warned that the opium trade could 'turn Afghanistan into a “narco-state”'.

It turned out that Afghanistan was already a narco-state, and not just any narco-state, but the biggest narco-state in the history of the world.

With a record 224,000 hectares under cultivation this year, the country produced an estimated 6,400 tons of opium, or around 90 percent of the world's supply. The drug is entwined with the highest levels of the Afghan government and the economy in a way that makes the cocaine business in Escobar-era Colombia look like a sideshow. The share of cocaine trafficking and production in Colombia's GDP peaked at six percent in the late 1980s; in Afghanistan today, according to U.N. estimates, the opium industry accounts for 15 percent of the economy, a figure that is set to rise as the West withdraws. "Whatever the term narco state means, if there is a country to which it applies, it is Afghanistan," says Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who studies illicit economies in conflict zones. "It is unprecedented in history."

That was four years ago. Things have gotten much worse since then.

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"Narco corruption went to the top of the Afghan government. Sure, Karzai had Taliban enemies who profited from drugs, but he had even more supporters who did."
- Thomas Schweich, senior U.S. counternarcotics official in Afghanistan from 2006 to 2008

This matters.
In fact, it matters so much that Foreign Policy In Focus had an article titled How a Little Pink Flower Defeated the World’s Sole Superpower.
The Guardian wrote an article titled How the heroin trade explains the US-UK failure in Afghanistan.
The National wrote Joining the dots between Afghanistan's opium trade and Washington’s failing struggle against the Taliban.
It is so obvious that even Donald Trump could recognize the problem.

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Donald Trump, unlike Obama and Bush, have taken the opium problem in Afghanistan seriously. However, like everything else Trump does, he's unintentionally made it worse.

A Taliban commander in the Afghan province of Helmand has ordered all drug labs to be moved out of the urban areas the insurgency controls as US airstrikes targeting the facilities are killing a rising number of civilians, according to a recorded conversation obtained by the Guardian.
...
After years in which the US airforce avoided hitting opium labs for fear of alienating local populations, it has targeted them for the last six months as part of a campaign to choke off the estimated $200m (£148m) in yearly revenue they earn for the Taliban. Bombing raids nearly tripled in the first three months of this year, compared with 2017.

In the message, Mullah Manan said: “Drones are roaming in the air and they have made men, women and children scared because of bombing. We must strictly explain to people that if they do not stop drugs factories in public houses they will go to jail.”

Any Taliban who permitted such facilities would also be punished, he added

So we are disrupting the Taliban's heroin labs at the cost of killing a bunch of Afghani locals. Thus we are making the Taliban look like the guys who care.

“Those working or residing in these labs [are] no longer viewed [by the US] as civilians involved in a criminal activity but as enemy combatants and subject to lethal force,” he wrote in a recently published paper.
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this couldn't have been legal

Funds from drug trafficking were used to buy arms, pay fighters and suborn government officials. Noriega later claimed it was his refusal to help Lt Col Oliver North provide arms for the contra rebels in Nicaragua that triggered the US decision to drop him....

In 1988, in the wake of Iran-contra, a Senate committee concluded: “The saga of ... Noriega represents one of the most serious foreign policy failures for the United States. Throughout the 1970s and the 1980s, Noriega was able to manipulate US policy toward his country, while skilfully accumulating near-absolute power in Panama. It is clear that each US government agency which had a relationship with Noriega turned a blind eye to his corruption and drug dealing.” Noriega was allowed to establish “the hemisphere’s first narco-kleptocracy”.

Two years after his overthrow, Noriega was put on trial in Miami. Sitting glumly in the dock day after day, he cut a much-reduced figure compared with the bumptious dictator who strutted outside the comandancia. Noriega was convicted on a restricted list of charges including money laundering and drug trafficking, and sentenced to 40 years in a maximum security jail.

The court refused to allow Noriega’s defence to present any evidence relating to his work for the CIA, his payments from the US government, his knowledge of US subversion in Central America, his contacts with senior figures such as Bush, and their knowledge of his activities as Panama’s dictator. His lawyers protested, but in vain. In many respects, the Miami proceedings resembled an east European show trial, with the outcome never in doubt.

Bush got his man, Noriega was silenced, nefarious US behaviour in Central America was effectively concealed, and the concept of justified, forcible regime change was fatefully reinforced.

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@gjohnsit "The New Confessions of An Economic Hit Man" and he goes into Panama. Great book and it just goes to show it does not matter who is in power in this country, the money rules it all. My only quibble with the author, John Perkins, is when he goes into the Constitution and the Republic being set up for equality. It was originally published in 2004 but he didn't edit that part from the 2016 version I am reading. This country was set up to protect wealth and go for more, that is what it is. While those men (founders) may have had good intentions, it's hard for me to see it that way anymore. Yup, full blown cynic here, ht detroitmechworks.

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Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur

snoopydawg's picture

@lizzyh7

You're right. It never matters who is in charge here because money always rules. The CIA is who brings most of the drugs into this country and you can see that the opioid epidemic took off after we invaded Afghanistan and got the poppy fields back up and running and being guarded by our troops.

Here you can see our troops working with some Afghan men

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and here's the troops loading it on to trucks.

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How many people are doing time for drugs when the real criminals get to go free?

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@snoopydawg
according to WashPost

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Bob In Portland's picture

@gjohnsit And Mueller was able to send Noriega to jail without noticing the CIA money-laundering, the arms trafficking and, of course, the drug-running. Everywhere you look it's Mueller, overlooking the CIA.

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detroitmechworks's picture

Because God didn't trust the British in the Dark.

And Trump just demanded another expansion to the MIC today.

Satire and snark are about all I have left, because I can no longer take the news seriously.

Narco State may end up being the signature legacy of American Policy. Fascism with a rainbow smiley face and places where no-one is to go on pain of severe punishment.

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

snoopydawg's picture

More about how we increased the production after the 2002 invasion and it wants to know where the money is going.. I'd sure like to know that too.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@snoopydawg

The CIA ran those poppy fields way back when the Soviets were trying to end them.

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.