The CIA has turned Afghanistan into a failed narco-state, says Alan MacLeod.

Article by Alan MacLeod* originally published in Mint Press News in 25 / 09 / 22. Translated and adapted by Rubens Turkienicz exclusively for Brasil 247

Geopolitics, profit, and poppies: 

How the CIA turned Afghanistan into a failed narco-state.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a death sentence for so many industries in Afghanistan. Even charities and aid agencies. they warned that economic displacement could lead to widespread famine. But there is one sector that is still thriving: the illicit opium trade. In the last year, the cultivation of Afghan opium poppies... grown up by more than a third, while counter-narcotics operations plummeted. If diz The country is the source of more than 90% of the world's total illicit opium, from which heroin and other opioids are manufactured. There is more land dedicated to opium cultivation in Afghanistan than is used for cocaine production in all of Latin America – and it is said that the production of the drug directly employs around half a million people.

This is a far cry from the 1970s, when poppy production was minimal and mostly consumed domestically. But this changed in 1979 with the CIA's Operation Cyclone, the extensive funding of Afghan Mujahideen militias, in an attempt to completely bleed the then-recent Soviet invasion. During the following decade, the CIA worked closely with its Pakistani counterparts, the ISI, to inject... US $ 2 billion in providing weapons and assistance to these groups – including the now infamous Osama Bin Laden and other warlords known for such atrocities as throwing acid in the faces of women who do not wear veils.

"From statements made by the [then] US ambassador to Iran, Richard Helms, there was little heroin production in Central Asia in the mid-1970s," he told [the source]. MintPress Professor Alfred McCoy, author of the book 'The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug TradeHowever, with the start of the CIA's covert war, opium production emerged along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, and soon refineries dotted the landscape. Trucks loaded with weapons paid for by American taxpayers traveled from Pakistan to its neighbors to the west, returning brim-to-the-barrel with opium for new refineries – their deadly product eventually reaching the streets of the world. With the influx of Afghan opium in the 1980s – claims Jeffrey St. Clair, co-author of the book 'Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press' – heroin addiction has more than doubled in the US.

“In order to finance the resistance for an extended period, the Mujahideen had to invent a means of sustenance that went beyond the weapons the CIA was providing,” McCoy said, noting that the weapons supplied were insufficient to feed the fighters’ families or reimburse them for lost labor.

“So, what the resistance fighters did was turn to opium. Afghanistan produced about 100 tons of opium in the 1970s. By the end of that 10-year period of CIA operations, in 1989-1990, that minimal amount of opium – 100 tons per year – had become a larger amount of 2.000 tons per year and already represented about 75% of the world's illicit opium trade.” 

The CIA achieved its goal of giving the USSR its Vietnam – with the Soviets failing to crush the Mujahideen rebellion until they [the Soviets] finally withdrew [from Afghanistan] in 1989. But US money and weaponry also made Afghanistan a dangerously unstable place, full of warring factions that used opium to finance their battles for internal supremacy. By 1999, annual production had reached 4.600 tonnes Ultimately, the Taliban emerged as the dominant force in the country and attempted to gain legitimacy by ending the opium trade.

They were remarkably successful at this. A ban on opium cultivation decreed by the Taliban-led government in 2000 led to an almost immediate drop to just 185 tons harvested the following year – as frightened farmers preferred not to risk attracting their attention.

The Taliban had hoped that the eradication program would have received Washington's approval and would entice the US to provide humanitarian aid. Unfortunately, however, history took a different turn. On September 11, 2001, the US experienced a massive case of... kickbackwhen Bin Laden's forces launched attacks on New York and Washington. The US ignored The Taliban's offer to hand it over to a third party, preferring instead to invade the country. Less than a month after the planes hit the World Trade Center, US troops were patrolling the fields of Afghanistan.

The world's first true narco-state.

The effect of the occupation was the expansion of drug production to unprecedented proportions; according to Professor McCoy's estimate, Afghanistan became the world's first true narco-state. McCoy points out that, in 2008, opium accounted for well over half of the country's GDP. In comparison, even in Colombia's darkest days, cocaine totaled only 3% of its GDP.

Currently, the UN esteem that approximately 6.300 tons of opium (and growing) are produced annually, occupying an area of ​​over 550 acres – an area almost the size of the state of Rhode Island (USA) – planted with poppy fields.

However, even while they were funding a spraying campaign massive and deadly aerial In Colombia, the US refused to replicate the same policy as in Afghanistan. "We cannot be in a situation where we remove the only source of income from people living in the second poorest country in the world without being able to provide them with an alternative," said NATO spokesman James Appathurai.

However, not everyone agreed that a passionate commitment to defending the quality of life of the poorest was the real reason for rejecting this policy. One of the skeptics is a former U.S. Marine Corps captain, Matthew Hoh. Hoh told... MintPress that aerial fumigation was not carried out because it would have been beyond the control of the Afghan government authorities – who were deeply involved in the drug trade, themselves owning poppy fields and opium production factories. “They feared that if they opted for aerial eradication, US pilots would eradicate everything at their whim and many of their own poppy fields would be hit.” In 2009, Hoh resigned From his post at the U.S. State Department in Zabul Province (Afghanistan) in protest against the continued occupation of Afghanistan by the U.S. government, he declared the following. MintPress:

“NATO military forces were essentially guarding the poppy fields and opium production sites under the guise of counter-insurgency operations. Their logic was, ‘We don’t want to take away people’s livelihoods.’ But in reality, what we were doing was protecting the wealth of our friends who were in power in Afghanistan.”

According to Hoh, there was a general disillusionment among the soldiers, who had to risk their lives daily. “What are we doing here? This is bullshit” – this was a common sentiment among American soldiers. The heroin trade involved virtually everyone in power, including Ahmed Wali – brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai – one of the biggest and most notorious drug kingpins in the south of the country. widely known because he was being paid by the CIA.

US attempts to block the opium trade – such as the policy of paying domestic militias to destroy poppy fields – often backfired, as they would refrain from planting in one area, collect large sums of money from the occupying forces, and use that money to plant elsewhere; effectively, they were paid both to plant and not to plant. Worse than this, local warlords and drug lords destroyed their rivals' crops and collected money from the US to do so, enriching themselves and placing themselves in a stronger position than before, having received the blessing of NATO forces.

A notable example of this is local strongman Gul Agha Sherzai, who eradicated his competitors' crops in Nangarhar Province (while quietly leaving his own in Kandahar Province untouched). However, all the US saw was a local politician seemingly committed to eliminating the illegal drug trade. As such, they showered him with money and other perks. “We literally gave this guy $10 million in cash to wipe out his competition,” said Hoh. “If you were to write a movie script about this, they’d say, ‘This is too improbable. Nobody’s going to believe this. Nothing is that insane or that stupid.’ But this is the way things are.”

McCoy pointed out that the Taliban were among the first beneficiaries of the drug trade and that they used it to increase their power and defeat the US.

"The expansion of opium production and the failure of the US to curb it provided the bulk of the funding for the Taliban – who captured a significant, yet unknown, portion of the local drug trafficking profits, which they used to finance guerrilla operations over the last 20 years, thus becoming a determining factor in the US defeat in Afghanistan."

'The needle and the damage done'

It is not particularly difficult to cultivate opium. Opium poppies thrive in hot, dry conditions, away from moisture and wind. Consequently, they have found a fertile home in much of central and western Asia. The plant has prospered in Afghanistan, especially in southern provinces like Helmand, near the tripoint where Afghanistan meets Pakistan and Iran. A large part of the irrigation system in Helmand was... subscribed by USAID (United States Agency for International Development) – an organization that acts as the public front for the CIA. When in full bloom, the poppy fields are spectacular, with beautiful flowers in vibrant pink, red, or white colors. Beneath the flowers lies a large seed pod. Farmers harvest these pods, draining them of a sap that becomes a resin when dry. This is often transported out of the country via the so-called "Southern Route," through Pakistan or Iran. However, as with any pipeline, much of the product is spilled along the way, causing an addiction epidemic throughout the region.

The effect of this on the Afghan population has been nothing short of disastrous. Between 2005 and 2015, the number of adults using drugs jumped from 900 to 2,4 million – according to the UN, which estimates that almost one in three households are affected by opioid addiction. While Afghanistan also produces copious amounts of marijuana and methamphetamine, opioids are the drugs of choice for most, with about 9% of the adult population (and a growing number of children) addicted to them. Added to this, there has been a surge in HIV cases, as users share needles – as stated to MintPress Professor Julien Mercille, author of the book “Cruel Harvest: US Intervention in the Afghan Drug Trade”. 

Contributing further to the despair were the 20 years of war and the US occupation. The number of Afghans living in poverty increased from 0,1 million in 2007 to 19,3 million in 2016. recent research A Gallup poll revealed that Afghans are the saddest people in the world, with almost nine out of ten respondents saying they are "suffering" and zero percent of the population declaring themselves as "thriving"—in the respondents' own words. When asked to rate their lives on a scale of ten, Afghans gave an average response of 2,7 points—a record low score compared to any other country surveyed. Even worse, when asked to predict their quality of life over the next five years, the average response was even lower: 2,3 points.

The effects of the CIA operation to bleed the Soviets dry in Afghanistan also produced a humanitarian crisis in neighboring Pakistan. As McCoy pointed out, in the late 1970s Pakistan had almost no addicts. However, by 1985, Pakistani government statistics recorded more than 1,2 million, transforming the two nations into the “global epicenter of the drug trade” almost overnight.

The problem has only gotten worse since then. One 2013 UN report It was estimated that nearly 7 million Pakistanis use drugs, with 4,25 million needing urgent treatment for addiction problems. Almost 2,5 million of these people were abusing heroin or other opioids. About 700 people die from overdoses every day.Not surprisingly, the highest rate of addiction occurs in the Afghan border provinces where heroin is manufactured. The same study notes that 11% of people in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa use illicit substances – primarily heroin.

Obviously, the drug crisis is also a medical crisis, with overwhelmed public hospitals filled with people suffering from drug-related illnesses. The social stigma of addiction has violently separated families, while the money and power that illicit drugs have brought have also contributed to this problem. transformed Many cities are hotspots of violence.

Iran has a similar number of opioid users, generally estimated Between two and three million. In cities near the Afghan/Pakistani border, a gram of opium can be bought for a pittance – between 25 and 50 cents. Therefore, despite the extremely harsh penalties According to official records regarding the possession and distribution of drugs, the country has... higher addition rate the world.

On a micro level, addiction breaks up families and ruins lives. However, on an international scale, the opium explosion has placed an entire region under significant strain. Thus, one consequence of US policy in the Middle East – from supporting jihadists to occupying nations – has been to unleash a worldwide opium addiction that has made a few people fantastically rich and destroyed the lives of tens of millions.

Domestic despair

The explosion in production also led to a global disaster. In the past decade, opioid-related deaths... increased by 71%According to the United Nations, much of the product cultivated by Afghan warlords ends up on Western streets. "I don't see how it can be a coincidence that you have an explosive growth in poppy production in Afghanistan and then you have a worldwide opioid epidemic," declared Hoh, a connection that raises the question of whether users in Berlin, Boston, or Brazil should be seen as victims of the war in Afghanistan as much as fallen soldiers are. If so, the numbers would be staggering. Approximately 841 thousand Americans have died from drug overdoses since the start of the war in Afghanistan, including more than 70 in 2019 alone. Most of these deaths involved opioids.

Officially, the DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) claims that essentially all illicit opioids entering the U.S. are grown in Latin America. However, Hoh considers this unconvincing. “When you check their own information and their reports on the extent of land used for illicit opioid production in Mexico and South America, it becomes clear that there is not enough production in the Western Hemisphere to meet the demand for illicit opioids in the U.S.,” he told [the publication]. MintPress.

A dirty story

The U.S. government has a long history of direct involvement in the global narcotics trade. In Colombia, they worked with President Álvaro Uribe on a national war on drugs, although internal U.S. documents... identified as one of the nation's most important drug traffickers, an employee of the infamous Medellín Cartel and a "close personal friend" of drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. The profits from drug operations financed Uribe's election campaigns in 2002 and 2006. General Manuel Noriega was also a key US ally. For many years, the Panamanian was on the CIA payroll – despite Washington knowing he had been involved in drug trafficking since at least 1972. Little changed when he became the de facto dictator of Panama in 1984. But the DEA director initially... praised for its “vigorous anti-drug trafficking policy.” However, in the end, the US decided to invade the country and capture Noriega, sentencing him to 40 years in a US federal prison for crimes committed, for the most part, while he was being paid by the CIA. At the same time this was happening, investigative journalist Gary Webb exposed How the CIA helped fund its dirty war against the leftist government of Nicaragua through the sale of crack cocaine to black communities across the US, linking far-right paramilitary groups with drug kingpins in the US, such as Rick Ross.

To this day, the US government continues to support Honduran strongman Juan Orlando Hernández, despite the president's proven connections to the drug trade. Earlier this year, a US court sentenced Hernández's brother, Tony, to life imprisonment for international drug trafficking, while Juan himself was found to be an unindicted co-conspirator in the case. However, President Hernández has proven effective in suppressing the anti-imperialist left within his country and in carrying out the US-backed 2009 military coup – a reason why he is unlikely to face charges in the near future.

The humanitarian impact of the Opium War was staggering. Until 1880, the British were flooding China With over 6.500 tons of opium each year – the equivalent of many billions of doses – causing massive social and economic upheavals, as China struggled to cope with a crippling addiction spread throughout the empire. Many Chinese still refer to that era today as “the century of humiliation.” In India and Pakistan, the effect was no less dramatic – as colonialists forced peasants to plant fields of inedible poppies (and later tea) instead of subsistence edible crops, causing enormous waves of famine with a frequency never before seen.

Millions of losers

The story is far more nuanced than some conspiracy theories like "the CIA controls the drug world" suggest. There are no American soldiers loading Afghan trucks with opium. However, it is known that many commanders are known for empowering the warlords who do. "The US military and the CIA bear a great responsibility for the explosion of opium production in Afghanistan," said Professor Mercille, explaining:

“After 09/11/01 [the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York], they basically allied themselves with many strongmen and warlords who were involved in some way in drug production and trafficking. These individuals were acting as local allies of the US and NATO and, therefore, were very protected against retaliation or arrest for drug trafficking because they were US allies.”

From the field, the war in Afghanistan closely resembled the war on drugs in Latin America and previous colonial campaigns in Asia, with the rapid militarization of the area and the empowerment of malleable local elites – which immediately began to siphon off massive profits that silently disappear into black holes. Meanwhile, millions pay the price, suffering within a militarized death zone and resorting to drugs as a coping mechanism. In the history of the opium explosion, there are few winners, but millions of losers.

Alan MacLeod He is a Senior Writer on the MintPress News staff. After completing his PhD in 2017, he published two books: 'Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News' and 'Advertising in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing ConsentHe has also contributed to FAIR.org, The Guardian, The Greyzone, Jacobin Magazine, and CommonDreams, as well as a number of academic articles.