22nd Jun 2022

The CIA's Intervention in Afghanistan

According to this 1998 interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, the CIA's intervention in Afghanistan preceded the 1979 Soviet invasion. This decision of the Carter Administration in 1979 to intervene and destabilize Afghanistan is the root cause of Afghanistan's destruction as a nation.

Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser
Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris, 15-21 January 1998

Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs ["From the Shadows"], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period, you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?

Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise Indeed, it was July 3, 1979, that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.

Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?

B: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today?

B: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?

B: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?

Q: Some stirred-up Moslems? But it has been said and repeated Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today.

B: Nonsense! It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn't a global Islam. Look at Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers. But what is there in common among Saudi Arabian fundamentalism, moderate Morocco, Pakistan militarism, Egyptian pro-Western or Central Asian secularism? Nothing more than what unites the Christian countries.

Translated from the French by Bill Blum

Copyright, Le Nouvel Observateur and Bill Blum. For fair use only.

See YouTube video

From Wikipedia: The Afghanistan conflict began in 1978 and has coincided with several notable operations by the United States (U.S.) Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The first operation, code-named Operation Cyclone, began in mid-1979, during the Presidency of Jimmy Carter. It financed (and eventually supplied weapons to) the anti-communist mujahideen guerrillas in Afghanistan following a 1978 Marxist coup and throughout the nearly ten-year military occupation of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union (U.S.S.R.). Carter's successor, Ronald Reagan, supported an expansion of the Reagan Doctrine, which aided the mujahideen along with several other anti-Soviet resistance movements around the world.

Operation Cyclone primarily supported militant Islamist groups that were favored by the regime of President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq in Pakistan, which borders Afghanistan to the south and east, at the expense of other groups fighting the Marxist-oriented Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA).[1] Specifically, and in deference to the priorities of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), CIA funding disproportionately benefited Muslim Brotherhood-inspired Afghan mujahideen commanders, most notably Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Jalaluddin Haqqani, although the CIA developed a limited unilateral relationship with the comparatively moderate northern Afghanistan commander Ahmad Shah Massoud (a favorite of British intelligence) beginning in late 1984. Operation Cyclone was one of the longest and most expensive CIA operations ever undertaken;[2] costing over $20–$30 million per year in 1980, and peaking at $630 million during the fiscal year ending in October 1987.[1][3][4][5] The program began modestly with provisions of antique British Lee–Enfield rifles but by 1986 included U.S.-origin state of the art weaponry, such as thousands of FIM-92 Stinger surface-to-air missiles. Michael Pillsbury, Morton I. Abramowitz, Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) William J. Casey, and the CIA's Islamabad station chief Milton Bearden, among others, have been named as the architects of the ambitious escalation of CIA activities in Afghanistan from 1985 on, as the Reagan administration rejected compromise with reformist Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in favor of a total mujahideen victory. Funding continued until January 1992 as the mujahideen battled the forces of Mohammad Najibullah's PDPA during the civil war in Afghanistan (1989–1992).

After the February 1989 withdrawal of Soviet troops, the CIA's objective was to topple the Najibullah government, which had been formed under Soviet occupation, even as the George H. W. Bush administration's State Department sometimes showed open skepticism towards the CIA's proposed military solution. By 1990, the ISI and Hekmatyar were working to violently eliminate their Afghan rivals, especially Massoud, in advance of the anticipated fall of the Afghan capital, Kabul. In spite of this internecine warfare, the ISI and CIA jointly formulated a plan to capture Jalalabad and Kabul during 1989-1990, marking a high point in cooperation between the two spy agencies. As part of the offensive, the CIA paid Massoud to close the Salang Pass, which Massoud failed to do. The Najibullah government finally collapsed in April 1992, several months after the December 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of U.S. aid to the mujahideen, leaving Afghanistan a failed state in the grip of a multifaceted civil war marked by horrific atrocities and the destruction of Kabul in mass-casualty rocket attacks. While some U.S. officials initially welcomed the emergence of the Taliban militia as it sought to restore its vision of Islamic order to the Pashtun heartland of Kandahar and then to the rest of Afghanistan, by the latter half of the 1990s the administration of President Bill Clinton became increasingly concerned about the relationship between Pakistan and the Taliban, as the Taliban and allied group Al-Qaeda became a more direct threat to the U.S., its citizens, and its foreign dignitaries. In response to the September 11 attacks, CIA personnel coordinated closely with Massoud's anti-Taliban Northern Alliance militia during the 2001 United States invasion of Afghanistan. During the invasion, which was largely planned by the CIA, the administration of President George W. Bush rejected the advice of many CIA officers to send Army Rangers and Marines to Tora Bora, allowing Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders to escape to Pakistan. Throughout the nearly 20-year U.S. occupation of Afghanistan, CIA-backed Afghan paramilitaries participated in numerous massacres and war crimes, most notably the Dasht-i-Leili massacre in 2001.

The United States National Security Council (NSC) agreed to explore additional ways to facilitate arms shipments to the mujahideen on December 17—an idea rendered moot by the Soviet invasion one week later.[16] Finally, on December 28 Carter signed a presidential finding explicitly allowing the CIA to transfer "lethal military equipment either directly or through third countries to the Afghan opponents of the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan," and to arrange "selective training, conducted outside of Afghanistan, in the use of such equipment either directly or via third country intermediation."

In the aftermath of the invasion, Carter was determined to respond vigorously to what he considered a dangerous provocation. In a televised speech, he announced sanctions on the U.S.S.R., promised renewed aid to Pakistan, and committed the U.S. to the Persian Gulf's defense.[3][4] Carter also called for a boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, which raised a bitter controversy.[24] British prime minister Margaret Thatcher enthusiastically backed Carter's tough stance, although British intelligence believed "the CIA was being too alarmist about the Soviet threat to Pakistan."[3] The thrust of U.S. policy for the duration of the war was determined by Carter in early 1980: Carter initiated a program to arm the mujahideen through Pakistan's ISI and secured a pledge from Saudi Arabia to match U.S. funding for this purpose. U.S. support for the mujahideen accelerated under Carter's successor, Ronald Reagan, at a final cost to U.S. taxpayers of some $3 billion (per Riedel, based on congressional appropriations). The Soviets were unable to quell the insurgency and withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, precipitating the dissolution of the Soviet Union itself.[3] Of the seven mujahideen groups supported by Zia's government, four espoused Islamic fundamentalist beliefs—and these fundamentalists received most of the funding.[10]

By 1992, the combined U.S., Saudi, and Chinese aid to the mujahideen was estimated at $6–12 billion, whereas Soviet military aid to Afghanistan was valued at $36–48 billion. The result was a heavily-armed, militarized Afghan society: Some sources indicate that Afghanistan was the world's top destination for personal weapons during the 1980s.[25] Some 1.5 million Afghans died as a result of warfare between 1979 and 1996.

Following an interagency review of Afghan policy overseen by the NSC and including representatives from the State Department and Defense Department in addition to the CIA, in March 1985 President Reagan signed a draft of a National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) that was pushed for by Fred Iklé and especially the arch-conservative Michael Pillsbury at the Defense Department, which formalized and provided a legal rationale for the changes that were already taking place with regard to CIA activities in Afghanistan. The resulting NSDD–166 reportedly included a highly classified supplement signed by NSA Robert McFarlane that detailed expanded forms of U.S. assistance to the mujahideen, such as the provision of satellite intelligence, "burst communication" devices, advanced weapons systems, and additional training to the Afghan rebels through the ISI. Furthermore, the document allowed the CIA to unilaterally support certain Afghan assets without the ISI's participation or knowledge. In sum, NSDD–166 defined the Reagan administration's policy as aiding the mujahideen by "all available means." In an April 30 meeting, Iklé communicated the general thrust of this policy to ISI Director Akhtar Abdur Rahman.[33] Vastly more Americans arrived in Pakistan to train ISI handlers on the new weapons systems. In turn, the ISI developed a complex infrastructure that was training 16,000 to 18,000 Afghan mujahideen annually by early 1986, with ISI chief of Afghan operations Mohammed Yousaf estimating that a further 6,000 to 7,000 rebels (including a number of Arab volunteers) were trained every year by mujahideen that had previously been recipients of ISI instruction. Although the CIA was theoretically empowered to act more independently of the ISI and took some steps to "audit" the ISI's handling of American resources in response to congressional concerns about fraud, the ISI remained the main conduit for U.S. support to the mujahideen and the bulk of the Reagan-era aid championed by conservatives went to Muslim Brotherhood-inspired commanders favored by the ISI, most notably Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

Among many other examples, the CIA's Islamabad station chief from May 1981 to mid-1984, Howard Hart, previously called for a Pakistani bounty on killed or captured Soviet troops; Gust Avrakotos, serving as the head of the CIA's task force on Afghan operations, praised a Pakistani program that provided incentives to mujahideen commanders based on the volume of captured Soviet belt buckles they turned in; the ISI organized repeated unsuccessful assassination attempts on Mohammad Najibullah, then in charge of Afghanistan's KHAD secret police (and later the President of Afghanistan), using CIA funds; and CIA-supplied long-range rockets (originally of Chinese or Egyptian origin) killed and maimed countless civilians during the bombardment of Kabul from 1985 on.

CROSS-BORDER ATTACKS

Beginning in early 1985, the CIA and ISI shipped thousands of translated Qurans across Afghanistan's northern border into the Central Asian Soviet republics. In retaliation for KGB-sponsored bombings that had killed hundreds in Pakistan, the ISI also organized mujahideen teams to carry out violent raids inside Soviet territory, which the CIA was at least aware of. Many other raids were launched by northern Afghan commanders operating largely independently of the ISI and CIA, including by Ahmad Shah Massoud. CIA and State Department analysts were horrified by these raids (believing they could cause an international crisis akin to the 1960 U-2 incident) and Hart's successor William Piekney conveyed a State Department message to Akhtar to the effect that the ISI should not encourage Afghans to cross the Soviet border (albeit with the caveat that, in Piekney's own words, "the Afghans would exploit opportunities that arose and do pretty much what they wanted to do"). However, Yousaf recounted that Casey had approved such acts of sabotage; according to Yousaf, Casey first broached the idea in late 1984 to an ambivalent reception by Akhtar, stating that "You should take the books ... and you can think of sending arms and ammunition if possible." Some of Casey's colleagues questioned this anecdote, but it was later corroborated by Gates (Casey's executive assistant at the time). Because President Reagan never signed a presidential finding to authorize this risky expansion of the CIA's mandate in Afghanistan, which would have entailed notifying certain members of the U.S. Congress, Coll observes: "If Casey spoke the words Yousaf attributed to him, he was almost certainly breaking American law. No one but President Reagan possessed the authority to foment attacks inside the Soviet Union."

The British role was particularly resented by the Pakistanis and some CIA officers found the French to be "grating," but the CIA came to rely on MI6 for intelligence regarding Massoud during these years.

In April 1987, three separate teams of Afghan rebels were directed by the ISI to launch coordinated violent raids on multiple targets across the Soviet border and extending, in the case of an attack on an Uzbek factory, as deep as over 10 miles into Soviet territory. In response, the Soviets issued a thinly-veiled threat to invade Pakistan to stop the cross-border attacks: No further attacks were reported.

STINGER MISSILES

In late September 1986, roughly two months after Bearden replaced Piekney as Islamabad station chief, the CIA began delivering U.S.-made state of the artFIM-92 Stingersurface-to-air missiles to the mujahideen. The Stingers used infrared homing technology to destroy Soviet aircraft from a distance of roughly 12,500 feet, seriously disrupting the increasingly effective use of low-flying attack helicopters by the Soviet Spetsnaz special forces; the Soviets eventually decided that it was no longer safe to evacuate their wounded by helicopter. CIA officers were aware that the Stingers could easily be used by terrorists to shoot down civilian aircraft and were reticent to abandon the last vestiges of plausible deniability by introducing U.S.-origin weaponry into Afghanistan, but their objections were overruled by Reagan administration hardliners, including by senior State Department official Morton I. Abramowitz. China and Pakistan, which were consulted in advance out of consideration for the security risks posed to those countries by the prospect of Soviet retaliation, approved the deliveries after careful deliberation. The possibility that the Stingers might be diverted for purposes not intended by U.S. policymakers provided an additional impetus for the CIA to expand the number of unilateral agents on its Afghan payroll (including both Massoud and Abdul Haq until Bearden ended direct subsidies to Haq after the latter criticized the ISI's role in the conflict), which was a comparatively minor expense when juxtaposed with the unprecedented congressionally-allocated $1.1 billion budget that it had to work with for its Afghan operations in fiscal 1986 ($470 million) and fiscal 1987 ($630 million). Bearden subsequently endorsed supplying the Stingers as a turning point in the Soviet–Afghan war.[40] In total, the CIA sent approximately 2,300 Stingers to Afghanistan, creating a substantial black market for the weapons throughout the Middle East, Central Asia, and even parts of Africa that persisted well into the 1990s. Perhaps 100 Stingers were acquired by Iran. The CIA later operated a program to recover the Stingers through cash buy-backs.[41] Despite Massoud's reputation as one of the most effective mujahideen commanders, Pakistan's ISI made sure that Massoud received just 8 Stingers—a fraction of 1% of the total—and none before 1991.

SOVIET WITHDRAW

By November 1986 the decision to withdraw Soviet troops had been made, although the exact timetable remained subject to revision; Najibullah was informed of the fait accompli in December. Around the same time, the CIA inaccurately predicted that the Soviet Union would stay the course in Afghanistan, possibly distorting the intelligence to support the hawkish views of Reagan administration officials; even a year later Gates was adamant that the imminent withdrawal was a Soviet ruse, although other officials, such as Secretary of State George Shultz (after speaking with Soviet Foreign MinisterEduard Shevardnadze), by then accepted that the Soviets were sincere. The U.S. rejected out of hand Soviet entreaties to work together to prevent civil war or the rise of what KGB head Vladimir Kryuchkov told Gates would be a "fundamentalist Islamic state" in Afghanistan; U.S. negotiators initially signaled a willingness to suspend CIA support to the mujahideen in exchange for a Soviet withdrawal, but President Reagan personally intervened to declare an aid cut-off unacceptable as long as the Soviets assisted Najibullah's regime. Nevertheless, Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan began in May 1988 pursuant to the terms of the Geneva Accords and was completed in February 1989. These events produced much elation in the U.S. government.

Shortly after taking office in 1989, President George H. W. Bush signed a presidential finding renewing the CIA's legal authority to conduct covert operations in Afghanistan.

In late 1990, the U.S. suspended most aid to Pakistan as a consequence of Pakistan's continued progress towards developing a nuclear weapon, as legally required by an amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act. Finally, after Soviet hardliners tried to oust Gorbachev in a failed August 1991 coup attempt, triggering a series of crises that culminated in the dissolution of the Soviet Union, President Bush's secretary of state James Baker reached an agreement with his Soviet counterpart Boris Pankin for both sides to cease sending weapons to either the mujahideen or Najibullah. This agreement—honored by the new government of Russia—came into force on January 1, 1992, at which point the Soviet Union no longer existed.

Following Dostum's defection, Massoud and his allied militia captured Kabul International Airport and amassed outside of Kabul from the north, while Hekmatyar and other mujahideen commanders advanced closer to Kabul from Charasyab to the south. In a televised speech, Najibullah stated that he planned to resign as part of a peaceful transition organized by the United Nations (UN). The two factions within Afghanistan's communist party disagreed on the question of whether to surrender to Hekmatyar or to Massoud. Massoud initially declined to enter the capital until a political settlement regarding the future of Afghanistan could be reached between the mujahideen groups then negotiating in Peshawar. After a tense exchange by radio in which Hekmatyar rejected Massoud's pleas for compromise and reconciliation, forces allied with Massoud entered Kabul, preempting Hekmatyar's planned offensive on the city. An interim government was established with Burhanuddin Rabbani—a religious scholar who had taught both Massoud and Hekmatyar during their time at Kabul University—serving as president (after a brief stint by acting president Sibghatullah Mojaddedi[53]) while Massoud took the reins of the defense ministry. Despite being offered the role of prime minister, Hekmatyar (heavily backed by the ISI) bombarded Kabul with rockets, inflicting mass casualties in a flailing bid to impose his personal rule on Afghanistan. The fighting in and around the capital plunged Afghanistan into a multifaceted civil war that would continue for several years, with all sides committing substantial atrocities. Eventually the Taliban, controlled by an obscure, soft-spoken, and insular former participant in Mohammad Yunus Khalis's mujahideen faction named Mohammed Omar emerged from the Pashtun heartland of Kandahar, taking control of all of southern Afghanistan and Herat by September 1995 before driving Massoud and the Afghan interim government from Kabul in September 1996: The Taliban proceeded to ban Afghan women and girls from school and from public life. Extensive Pakistani and Saudi support played a key role in these Taliban victories. Massoud retreated to his native Panjshir Valley, forming the United Front (also known as the "Northern Alliance"), which was backed by India, Iran, and Russia as a bulwark against the further expansion of the Taliban's militant Sunni fundamentalism into Central Asia. 

In August 1996, the ISI was providing between $30,000–$60,000 per month to the militant Kashmiri group Harakat ul-Ansar (HUA). This group was also reaching out for money from bin Laden.[56] Bin Laden had returned to Afghanistan earlier in the year after being expelled from Sudan by President Omar al-Bashir under heavy U.S. pressure, initially settling in Jalalabad, which was then controlled by former mujahideen whom bin Laden knew from the 1980s—not by the Taliban. Jalalabad fell to the Taliban in August, shortly before the Taliban evicted Massoud from Kabul, and bin Laden subsequently moved to Kandahar, where (despite Taliban obfuscations to the effect that bin Laden was merely "a guest of the previous regime") he seems to have established a close relationship with Mullah Omar, who repeatedly praised bin Laden as a hero to Muslims (including in a private September 1998 meeting with Saudi intelligence chief Turki bin Faisal Al Saud, which damaged Afghanistan–Saudi Arabia relations). The Taliban granted bin Laden and his followers access to the Tarnak Farm complex and to old, U.S.-built apartments located near Kandahar International Airport.[57] The U.S. became increasingly concerned with the relationship between Pakistan and the Taliban. Pakistan supported the Taliban in different ways and Pakistani officials considered themselves to be in control of the group, but history has shown that the Taliban pursued its own interests rather than acting as a proxy for external forces.

HEROIN and the CIA

From Wikipedia: For eight years, (until October 2009), Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of the then-newly elected President of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai, was on the payroll of the CIA - but is also alleged to have been involved in opium trafficking in the Middle East.[2][3]

Alfred McCoy has argued that the CIA had fostered heroin production in Afghanistan for decades to finance operations aimed at containing the spread of communism, and later to finance operations aimed at containing the spread of the Islamic state.[4] McCoy alleges that the CIA protects local warlords and incentivises them to become drug lords. In his book "Politics of Heroin",[5] McCoy alleges CIA complicity in the global drug trade in Afghanistan, Southeast Asia, Central America, Columbia, argueing that the CIA follows a similar pattern in all their drug involvement.

THE FRENCH CONNECTION

From WeAreChange: In the beginning, CIA arms, money, and disinformation enabled Corsican criminal syndicates in Marseille to wrestle control of labor unions from the Communist Party.

The Corsicans gained political influence and control over the docks — ideal conditions for cementing a long-term partnership with mafia drug distributors, which turned Marseille into the postwar heroin capital of the Western world. Marseille’s first heroin laboratories were opened in 1951, only months after the Corsicans took over the waterfront.

EARLY 1950's, SOUTHEAST ASIA

The Nationalist Chinese army, organized by the CIA to wage war against Communist China, became the opium barons of The Golden Triangle (parts of Burma, Thailand and Laos), the world’s largest source of opium and heroin. Air America, the CIA’s principal airline proprietary, flew the drugs all over Southeast Asia. (See Christopher Robbins, Air America, Avon Books, 1985, chapter 9)

1950's TO EARLY 1970's, INDOCHINA

During U.S. military involvement in Laos and other parts of Indochina, Air America flew opium and heroin throughout the area. Many GI’s in Vietnam became addicts. A laboratory built at CIA headquarters in northern Laos was used to refine heroin. After a decade of American military intervention, Southeast Asia had become the source of 70 percent of the world’s illicit opium and the major supplier of raw materials for America’s booming heroin market.

1973-80, AUSTRALIA

The Nugan Hand Bank of Sydney was a CIA bank in all but name. Among its officers were a network of US generals, admirals and CIA men, including former CIA Director William Colby, who was also one of its lawyers. With branches in Saudi Arabia, Europe, Southeast Asia, South America and the U.S., Nugan Hand Bank financed drug trafficking, money laundering and international arms dealings. In 1980, amidst several mysterious deaths, the bank collapsed, $50 million in debt. (See Jonathan Kwitny, The Crimes of Patriots: A True Tale of Dope, Dirty Money and the CIA, W.W. Norton & Co., 1 987.)

1970's AND 1980's, PANAMA

For more than a decade, Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega was a highly paid CIA asset and collaborator, despite knowledge by U.S. drug authorities as early as 1971 that the general was heavily involved in drug trafficking and money laundering. Noriega facilitated ”guns-for-drugs” flights for the contras, providing protection and pilots, as well as safe havens for drug cartel officials, and discreet banking facilities. U.S. officials, including then-CIA Director William Webster and several DEA officers, sent Noriega letters of praise for efforts to thwart drug trafficking (albeit only against competitors of his Medellin Cartel patrons). The U.S. government only turned against Noriega, invading Panama in December 1989 and kidnapping the general once they discovered he was providing intelligence and services to the Cubans and Sandinistas. Ironically drug trafficking through Panama increased after the US invasion. (John Dinges, Our Man in Panama, Random House, 1991; National Security Archive Documentation Packet The Contras, Cocaine, and Covert Operations.)

1980's, CENTRAL AMERICA

The San Jose Mercury News series written by Gary Webb, documents just one thread of the interwoven operations linking the CIA, the contras and the cocaine cartels. Obsessed with overthrowing the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua, Reagan administration officials tolerated drug trafficking as long as the traffickers gave support to the contras. In 1989, the Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations (the Kerry committee) concluded a three-year investigation by stating:

“There was substantial evidence of drug smuggling through the war zones on the part of individual Contras, Contra suppliers, Contra pilot's mercenaries who worked with the Contras, and Contra supporters throughout the region…. U.S. officials involved in Central America failed to address the drug issue for fear of jeopardizing the war efforts against Nicaragua…. In each case, one or another agency of the U.S. government had information regarding the involvement either while it was occurring, or immediately thereafter…. Senior U S policy makers were not immune to the idea that drug money was a perfect solution to the Contras’ funding problems.” (Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy, a Report of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and Intenational Operations, 1989)

1980's TO EARLY 1990's, AFGHANISTAN

ClA-supported Moujahedeen rebels engaged heavily in drug trafficking while fighting against the Soviet-supported government and its plans to reform the very backward Afghan society. The Agency’s principal client was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, one of the leading drug lords and leading heroin refiner. CIA supplied trucks and mules, which had carried arms into Afghanistan, were used to transport opium to laboratories along the Afghan Pakistan border. The output provided up to one half of the heroin used annually in the United States and three-quarters of that used in Western Europe. US officials admitted in 1990 that they had failed to investigate or take action against the drug operation because of a desire not to offend their Pakistani and Afghan allies. In 1993, an official of the DEA called Afghanistan the new Colombia of the drug world.

The Washington Post admitted in 2006 that heroin production in Afghanistan “broke all records” while under U.S. occupation.

Heroin from Afghanistan is the major source for U.S. citizens, “Big Pharma”, and the ‘corporate drug dealers’ who sell “legal drugs” also have a hand in the epidemic because they produce and sell ‘Opioids’ such as OxyContin and Percocet which is similar to heroin. Opioid medications are normally used as painkillers for broken bones, lacerations or post-surgery pain. However, abusing Opioids can also lead to heroin use.

The Taliban banned the production of opium in 2000. The War in Afghanistan was mainly about producing opium which did end up in the streets of Iran, Russia and China. According to a Pravda report in 2015 by William Edstrom titled ‘Heroin Dealer in Chief. Afghanistan, Source of 90% of The World’s Heroin’ stated the impact of Afghanistan’s opium production on neighboring countries.

The heroin epidemic is now affecting cities and towns across the U.S. 

That’s the point of having the prohibitive drug trade, which the CIA effectively manages for the benefit of Wall Street.

The Pentagon arms the Mexican government and the US Drug Enforcement Agency enforces the ‘military solution’, the biggest US banks receive, launder and transfer hundreds of billions of dollars to the drug lords’ accounts, who then buy modern arms, pay private armies of assassins and corrupt untold numbers of political and law enforcement officials on both sides of the border.

Drug profits, in the most basic sense, are secured through the ability of the cartels to launder and transfer billions of dollars through the US banking system. The scale and scope of the US banking-drug cartel alliance surpasses any other economic activity of the US private banking system.

According to US Justice Department records, one bank alone, Wachovia Bank (now owned by Wells Fargo), laundered $378.3 billion dollars between May 1, 2004 and May 31, 2007 (The Guardian, May 11, 2011). Every major bank in the US has served as an active financial partner of the murderous drug cartels.

The major US banks are the financial engines that allow the billion dollar drug empires to operate, the White House, the US Congress and the law enforcement agencies are the basic protectors of these banks.

The Federal Reserve creates an environment in which investors can borrow at 25 to 50 basis points and lend elsewhere at much higher rates, forcing money to flow from the United States into these other opportunities. And bubbles result — worldwide.

The Federal Reserve and its long-standing partner, the US Treasury, engineered the housing bubble, including the fraudulent inducement of America as part of a financial coup d’état. Our bankruptcy was not an accident. It was engineered at the highest levels.

Laundering drug money is one of the most lucrative sources of profit for Wall Street; the banks charge hefty commissions on the transfer of drug profits, which they then lend to borrowing institutions at interest rates far above what they pay to drug trafficker depositors. Awash in sanitized drug profits, these US titans of the finance world can easily buy their own elected officials to perpetuate the system.

Do yourself a favor. Think for yourself. Be your own person. Question everything. Stand for principle. Champion individual liberty and self-ownership where you can. Develop a strong moral code. Be kind to others. Do no harm, unless that harm is warranted. Pretty obvious stuff...but people who hold these things in their hearts seem to be disappearing from the earth at an accelerated rate. Stay safe, my friends. Thanks for being here.

READ MORE:

Thank you for stopping by. PLEASE scroll down to post to social media.