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Trading with the Enemy - ‘Narco-renditions’ in Afghanistan

David Dastych - “Dear David, I badly need your help. Some time ago a Russian newspaper “Vremya Novostei” published a story written by Arkady Dubnov, one of the best informed Russian journalists on Central Asia, about the alleged role of the US Air Force in heroin traffic from Afghanistan to Europe.

He wrote that the US Air Force transported 85% of heroin produced in Afghanistan. Dubnov quotes anonymous Afghani sources (there are also some accusations of Karzai’s brothers who take part in this scheme).

The article also claims Afghan warlords have some deals with local US and British commanders not to liquidate the poppy plantations etc. What do you think about that? Have you ever heard about such possibilities? Best regards, Andrei.”

This is a letter I received from my Russian friend, Andrei Soldatov, a respected investigative journalist and the Managing Editor of an Internet Magazine “Agentura.ru”. Soldatov is young (in his 30’s), not a Putin crony and a very brave reporter (Dubrovka, Beslan, Chechnya, Lebanon war), who had many times clashes with the Russian special services over his objective reporting and publishing. That’s why I trust him. The only national economy of Afghanistan is virtually the narco-business--worth some $ 10 billion or more per year. I have been receiving hints since a year or so that the ISAF forces in Afghanistan, the American and the British forces there in particular (at least some units) are deep-rooted in the Afghani narco-business.

heroin

Are some units deep-rooted in the Afghani narco-business?

It seems that the U.S. Government is tolerating it, and the British Government, too. The worse part of the whole dirty scandal is that allegedly some heroin is purchased from Taliban guerillas, in exchange for weapons. Thus, the ISAF (NATO) is selling weapons to the enemy, who later uses them against soldiers of the Alliance in battle. It is exactly the same corrupt practice that had been so popular (and still is) in Chechnya, where the Russian forces were selling Russian weapons to their enemy--the Chechen Jihadists they fought against. The main motive is, of course, money. But the Russian soldiers are poor devils, while the U.S. Air Force troops by comparison are elite, well paid and equipped.

Arkady Dubnov wrote: “Paradoxically as it is, British servicemen and their American colleagues have found themselves now dragged into the international mafia that buys drugs made in Afghanistan and smuggles them abroad.”

I wouldn’t exclude such a possibility. There could be even more opportunities for the Turkish, Albanian, Russian and other wholesale drug dealers to infiltrate Western services. Some time ago, a trusted information source told me that some CIA so called “rendition flights”, secretly executed over several years and passing through Western and Eastern Europe could be used for drug trafficking.

CIA planes, beyond any control, landed in Bosnia, Kosovo, also in Poland, Romania, Germany, Spain, Italy, Britain and in other European countries. Some of these countries and territories were either mafia strongholds (for example Bosnia and Kosovo). Others were main drug markets (Germany, Britain), still others (like Poland, Romania) could be transit route countries, controlled by Russian mafia organizations. And that’s not to mention Turkey, where the ‘bubbas’ operate, distributing heroin all over Europe and beyond.

While the international human rights organizations focused on the investigation of alleged CIA kidnapping and torture of al-Qaeda suspects and prisoners, they never paid any attention to a fair possibility that the infamous, secret and uncontrolled CIA “rendition flights” could be used to smuggle heroin from Afghanistan to Europe.

This is only an allegation, but perhaps some institutions of the European Union (EU) should pay serious attention to this other possible dark side of the CIA “renditions”.

On the Afghani side, it seems that the whole pro-Western administration of President Hamid Karzai, and also his two brothers, Kajum Karzai and Akhmed Vali Karzai, are head-to-heels involved in the narcotics trade.

Quoting an American expert, Arkady Dubnov wrote that: “The US expert who attended the Kabul conference last month [October, 2007] said that drug dealers had infiltrated Afghani state structures to the extent where they could easily paralyze the work of the government if the decision to arrest one of them was ever made.”

The ISAF military forces - American, British, German, Polish and of other European nations – are trying hard to pacify the situation in Afghanistan, fighting against the Taliban resurge offensive, while at the same time a part of them is ‘stabbing them in the back.’ One wonders why this situation is tolerated by the U.S. government and some European governments?

The answer could be easier to guess than expected:

“Some Afghani businessmen believe” – wrote Arkady Dubnov – “that the United States and the government in Kabul need trafficking to keep the Afghani financial market in shape. In other words, these revenues enable the Afghani Central Bank to maintain the local monetary unit at the proper level. Without them, it would have taken substantial financial injections from Washington.”

The same seems true for a lack of effective control over the destruction of poppy fields in Afghanistan. As the (poor) income from the poppy cultivation is the only means of subsistence of Afghani villagers, they are not interested to lose it. So far, drug dealers pay them. But if the poppy fields could be effectively destroyed (defoliated) by ISAF forces or the Karzai administration officials, the only choice left would be to charge the U.S. and European taxpayers with an additional burden to support the Afghani population.

But by allowing illegal exports of opium (and heroin) from Afghanistan (“Afghani opium reaching the international market accounts 93% of global production”) the West is funding the radical Jihad world-wide. Any other solutions in sight? It’s high time to find some.

This article was first published at Canada Free Press

David Dastych is a former Polish intelligence operative, who served in the 1960s-1980s and was a double agent for the CIA from 1973 until his arrest in 1987 by then-communist Poland on charges of espionage. Now he is an international journalist, who writes for Poland's acclaimed weekly, WPROST, Canada Free Press, and The Polish Panorama (Canada), Ocnus Net (Britain), FrontPageMagazine and The New Media Journal (USA), Axis Information and Analysis (international), Nachrichten Heute (Switzerland), Agentura.ru (Russia), and runs his own David’s Media Agency.

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