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July 23, 2007

"Good" War Maybe not so Good After All?

The Daily Mail in the U.K. has an editorial today by Craig Murray in which he looks at the involvement of Britain in the "good war" in Afghanistan (as opposed to the "bad war" in Iraq) and wonders whether the country's human losses have been suffered for the purpose of protecting Afghanistan's heroin crop. He's not buying the arguments that British servicemen are there to bring democracy, help establish order, fight the Taliban, and prevent the spread of radical Islam into Pakistan. The one accomplishment, the "one massive transformation" that has occurred in the country over the past 6 years, has been the 66% increase in the country's GDP. That "startling" increase isn't being trumpeted because it is the result of a bumper opium crop.

Isn't it fascinating that under the evil Taliban, the country's opium crop was virtually wiped out. Now that we've rid the country of the Taliban, opium is plentiful again, meaning the "only real achievement to date is falling street prices for heroin in London."

And here's the best part. Afghanistan has, under Western occupation, learned how to convert their opium into heroin before exporting it, thereby increasing profits. This heroin production is occurring "on an industrial scale," with the heroin produced "in factories" to which opium has been delivered by tankers and big trucks traveling on roads paved and protected by the U.S. and Nato, which look the other way.

How can this have happened, and on this scale? 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.

When we attacked Afghanistan, America bombed from the air while the CIA paid, armed and equipped the dispirited warlord drug barons – especially those grouped in the Northern Alliance – to do the ground occupation. We bombed the Taliban and their allies into submission, while the warlords moved in to claim the spoils. Then we made them ministers.

So who the heck is Craig Murray, how does he know all this?

My knowledge of all this comes from my time as British Ambassador in neighbouring Uzbekistan from 2002 until 2004. I stood at the Friendship Bridge at Termez in 2003 and watched the Jeeps with blacked-out windows bringing the heroin through from Afghanistan, en route to Europe. I watched the tankers of chemicals roaring into Afghanistan.

Incidentally, Murray also offers a fascinating explanation for what happened to Alexander Litvinenko, the former KGB agent who died from polonium 210 poisoning. Upon further looking, I discovered he has written about it before. In a nutshell, Litvinenko discovered that government officials were involved in the heroin trade and made the mistake of telling Vladimir Putin, not realizing those officials were his friends.

How ironic that way back in January of 2003, before we invaded Iraq, Ian Roberts wrote on Common Dreams that "The US Economy Needs Oil Like a Junkie Needs Heroin - And Iraq Will Supply Its Next Fix." How interesting that back in 2002, Peter Dale Scott wrote a book about how drug-trafficking and oil shaped global politics in his book "Drugs, Oil, and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina." How interesting that just as Donald Rumsfeld was glad-handing Saddam Hussein back in the good old days, he was also spotted glad-handing the drug lords in Afghanistan back in 2003. How interesting that in 2004, Ted Galen Carpenter wrote for the Cato Institute that heroin was so crucial to Afghanistan's economy that we needed to "look the other way" about it so we wouldn't make the terrorists even more angry with us and hurt our efforts in what I increasingly believe is a bogus "War on Terror."

I don't know whether Murray is right or not. I'd hate to think our nations have sacrificed our soldiers' lives to open up the heroin trade again, thereby enriching close friends of Putin. On the other hand, maybe such a faustian bargain was necessary to keep Russia from helping Iran against us in the next war for oil?

Posted by Becky at July 23, 2007 11:57 AM