The Fake Drug War: "Opium, the CIA and the Karzai Administration"

Our nation is a global drug dealer. Every American citizen who is in prison on drug charges is a political prisoner. The prison industrial complex is not designed to punish criminals, it is designed to control black men. GI

"On one hand, you're saying the United States government is spending millions of dollars to eliminate the flow of drugs onto our streets. At the same time, we are doing business with the very same goverment that is flooding our streets with cocaine." Immortal Technique


Click on Peruvian Cocaine video below or here.





From History News Network:
Alfred McCoy's importantnew article for TomDispatch (March 30, 2010) deserves to mobilize Congress for a serious revaluation of America's ill-considered military venture in Afghanistan.  The answer to the question he poses in his title – "Can Anyone Pacify the World's Number One Narco-State?" – is amply shown by his impressive essay to be a resounding "No!" . . . not until there is fundamental change in the goals and strategies both of Washington and of Kabul.

He amply documents that

• the Afghan state of Hamid Karzai is a corrupt narco-state, to which Afghans are forced to pay bribes each year $2.5 billion, a quarter of the nation's economy;

• the Afghan economy is a narco-economy:  in 2007 Afghanistan produced 8,200 tons of opium, a remarkable 53% of the country's GDP and 93% of global heroin supply.

• military options for dealing with the problem are at best ineffective and at worst counterproductive:  McCoy argues that the best hope lies in reconstructing the Afghan countryside until food crops become a viable alternative to opium, a process that could take ten or fifteen years, or longer.  (I shall argue later for an interim solution: licensing Afghanistan with the International Narcotics Board to sell its opium legally.)

Perhaps McCoy's most telling argument is that in Colombia cocaine at its peak represented only about 3 percent of the national economy, yet both the FARC guerillas and the right-wing death squads, both amply funded by drugs, still continue to flourish in that country.  To simply eradicate drugs, without first preparing for a substitute Afghan agriculture, would impose intolerable strains on an already ravaged rural society whose only significant income flow at this time derives from opium.  One has only to look at the collapse of the Taliban in 2001, after a draconian Taliban-led reduction in Afghan drug production (from 4600 tons to 185 tons) left the country a hollow shell.

On its face, McCoy's arguments would appear to be incontrovertible, and should, in a rational society, lead to a serious debate followed by a major change in America's current military policy.  McCoy has presented his case with considerable tact and diplomacy, to facilitate such a result.

The CIA's Historic Responsibility for Global Drug Trafficking

Unfortunately, there are important reasons why such a positive outcome is unlikely any time soon.  There are many reasons for this, but among them are some unpleasant realities which McCoy has either avoided or downplayed in his otherwise brilliant essay, and which have to be confronted if we will ever begin to implement sensible strategies in Afghanistan.

The first reality is that the extent of CIA involvement in and responsibility for the global drug traffic is a topic off limits for serious questioning in policy circles, electoral campaigns, and the mainstream media.  Those who have challenged this taboo, like the journalist Gary Webb, have often seen their careers destroyed in consequence.

Read more @ Opium, the CIA and the Karzai Administration

tags: drugs, immortal technique, prison industrial complex

photo: source