Who are we fighting in Afghanistan?

[Octafish]

102. Strange Victory

How the US Managed to Make Afghanistan the World’s Top Heroin Exporter

by JACK BALKWILL
CounterPunch, July 15, 2015

Afghan Brigadier General Abdul Sama was accused recently of smuggling over 40 pounds of heroin.

It should come as no surprise that an Afghan general was caught smuggling heroin, the surprise is that any high official in that country should be charged with a crime for profiting from the trade in illegal drugs while under the watchful eye of American forces.

Under American occupation, Afghanistan quickly became the world’s leader in opium production, producing over 90% of the world’s supply. The Taliban had almost shut down opium production prior to the US invasion in 2001 to the chagrin of international drug runners, and no doubt the international banking industry, which earns big profits laundering billions of dollars in illegal drug money annually. Illegal drugs account for about 8% of all international trade.

Few Americans are aware of the long history of the CIA’s running illegal drugs internationally, thanks to the untiring efforts of the mainstream press. Were citizens aware, few would be surprised that heroin production has skyrocketed under US occupation of Afghanistan.

The tragic case of journalist Gary Webb of the San Jose Mercury News is a case in point, and represents perhaps the widest-known attempt at suppressing the story of CIA drug-running endeavors, with the mainstream US press shamelessly and dutifully attacking Webb for attempting to expose the inconvenient truth.

That truth: in the 1980’s, the CIA was actively shipping cocaine from Central America into the USA using its own “airline” in order to earn money to circumvent a Congressional ban on continued support for the terrorist Contras, a Reagan-administration-backed counterinsurgency seeking to overthrow democracy in Nicaragua on behalf of US ruling interests. Webb lost his job, and was blackballed from his profession for telling the truth and eventually either was murdered or committed suicide from the pressures our corrupt system can apply against a citizen who blows the whistle.

Former Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) official Michael Levine wrote that he discovered heroin was being smuggled into the USA inside the bodies of US troops who had died in Vietnam during the sixties. After reporting this ghoulish information, he was transferred and told that it was a CIA operation and he should shut his mouth about it.

After being transferred to South America, Levine then reported on massive cocaine smuggling and was again told to shut his mouth as it too was a CIA operation and he should go along with the program.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/07/09/us-managed-to-make-afghanistan-the-worlds-top-heroin-exporter/