Foreign Policy magazine this month features an article entitled “Think Again: The Afghan Drug Trade“, which is a decent overview of the opium problem – as far as it goes. Unsurprisingly, however, in doing so, it proverbially ignores the elephant in the room, and in doing so represents part of…
The Washington Post reports today that "The U.S. military is funding a massive protection racket in Afghanistan, indirectly paying tens of millions of dollars to warlords, corrupt public officials and the Taliban to ensure save passage of its supply convoys throughout the country, according to congressional investigators."…
In November 2008, I wrote: The question still remains of who is really responsible for the lion’s share of the highly profitable Afghan opium trade. Mr. Pietschmann [of the UNODC -- see link above for full article] suggested a role of Kurdish groups in trafficking the drug from Iran into…
The New York Times has an illuminating article regarding the opium trade in Afghanistan. The title is “U.S. Turns a Blind Eye to Opium in Afghan Town“, and it begins (emphasis added): The effort to win over Afghans on former Taliban turf in Marja has put American and NATO commanders…
Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai has reappointed Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum as his chief of army staff. General Dostum, for those who don’t know, is “one of the most ruthless warlords” in Afghanistan, and as a member of the Northern Alliance, a U.S. ally and likely C.I.A. asset in the…
Zarar Ahmad Moqbel has been appointed by President Hamid Karzai as Afghanistan’s counter-narcotics minister. British officials are reportedly “dismayed” at the appointment, since they lobbied to have him removed from his post as Interior Minister in 2008 for his alleged involvement in corruption. Reports the Telegraph: The interior ministry, which…
The New York Times reports: The Obama administration’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan told allies on Saturday that the United States was shifting its drug policy in Afghanistan away from eradicating opium poppy fields and toward interdicting drug supplies and cultivating alternative crops. “The Western policies against the opium…
Indian police last week arrested Hassan Ali Khan, who was wanted for investigations into money laundering and other illicit activities, and who is also said to have ties to Dawood Ibrahim, the underworld kingpin who evidence indicates was the mastermind behind the terrorist attacks in Mumbai last month. Ibrahim is…
The role in the terrorist attacks in Mumbai last month of an underworld kingpin that heads an organization known as D-Company, has known ties to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and who is alleged to have ties with the CIA is apparently being whitewashed, suggesting that his capture and handover to…
Correction: This report incorrectly states that Omar Saeed Sheikh was imprisoned for his involvement in a plane hijacking. He was imprisoned for his involvement in the kidnapping of American and British nationals and released in exchange for the hostages of a plane hijacking. Details have emerged regarding who was responsible…
The New York Times reported this week that the Taliban have cut back on poppy cultivation and is stockpiling opium, grossly overstating the group’s role in the Afghanistan drug trade. “Afghanistan has produced so much opium in recent years,” the Times reported Thursday, “that the Taliban are cutting poppy cultivation and stockpiling…
A number of jets connected to drug-trafficking, including a Gulfstream II carrying more than 3 tons of cocaine that crashed in the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico last year, have been linked to the CIA.…
U.S. intelligence agencies have publicly claimed that intercepted communications show that officers of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s intelligence agency, were responsible for the bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan on July 7. The government of Afghanistan has accused Pakistan of being behind the attack, as well as an earlier…
Earlier this year, Jane’s Information Group ranked Afghanistan as one of the world’s most unstable countries, following the Palestinian territories and Somalia. Last month, Foreign Policy magazine ranked Afghanistan at number eight on its failed states index. Violence in Afghanistan has grown steadily over the years, so that it is…
Pakistan is one of the most dangerous states in the world today, many observers have postulated, with the spread of militant Islamic radicalism threatening total destabilization in a nation armed with nuclear weapons. The US government has taken the position that it is better to support the dictatorship of Pervez…
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