Monday, May 12, 2008

NATO AND THE HEROIN INDUSTRY

"Heroin trafficking is also the main source of funding for the al-Qaeda terrorists."
~ Sibel Edmonds


Bülent Ersoy, whom you may remember objecting to TSK's land invasion back in February will be prosecuted for her remarks. From Bianet:


According to daily Taraf, the authorities decided to open a case against Ersoy for “alienating people from military service” after investigating her words regarding how she would not sent her son to someone else’s war, which were said during a TV show.

Her words which brought the case were: “If I had given birth to a child and someone sitting at a desk had said ‘You will do this, he will do that’, and I would have buried my child, would I accept that?”

According to the report mentioned above, Bakırköy Public Prosecutor Ali Çakır asked for three year prison sentence for Bülen Ersoy, claiming that she committed the crime of “alienating people from military service.” Not only that the public prosecutor did not see Ersoy’s explanations within the context of freedom of expression and critique, he also included her speech in the scope of article 318, which regulates the deed of “alienating people from military service”, found under the category of crimes committed against the national defense, and thus first asked for two year prison sentence.


It also looks like the US is doing more than turning a blind eye to the cultivation of opium poppies in Afghanistan. There are a collection of news links on the subject at Cryptogon. One of those links describes Russian chagrin at the NATO-led spread of drug-trafficking, mostly because Russia has a huge drug problem. Check this:


Could it be that the American military in Afghanistan is involved in drug trafficking? Yes, it is quite possible, according to Russia’s Ambassador to Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov.

Commenting on reports that the United States military transport aviation is used for shipping narcotics out of Afghanistan, the Russian envoy said there was no smoke without fire.

“If such actions do take place they cannot be undertaken without contact with Afghans, and if one Afghan man knows this, at least a half of Afghanistan will know about this sooner or later,” Kabulov told Vesti, Russia’s 24-hour news channel. “That is why I think this is possible, but cannot prove it.”

[ . . . ]

When Russia backed the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan to crush the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the post-9/11 scenario, the last thing it expected to happen was that drug trafficking from Afghanistan would assume gargantuan proportions under the U.S. military. Since 2001, poppy fields, once banned by the Taliban, have mushroomed again. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Afghanistan produced 8,200 tonnes of opium last year, enough to make 93 per cent of the world’s heroin supply.

The U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organisation [NATO] forces in the country have not only failed to eliminate the terrorist threat from the Taliban, but also presided over a spectacular rise in opium production. Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Afghanistan was on the brink of becoming a “narco state”.

[ . . . ]

When Russia backed the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan to crush the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the post-9/11 scenario, the last thing it expected to happen was that drug trafficking from Afghanistan would assume gargantuan proportions under the U.S. military. Since 2001, poppy fields, once banned by the Taliban, have mushroomed again. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Afghanistan produced 8,200 tonnes of opium last year, enough to make 93 per cent of the world’s heroin supply.

The U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organisation [NATO] forces in the country have not only failed to eliminate the terrorist threat from the Taliban, but also presided over a spectacular rise in opium production. Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Afghanistan was on the brink of becoming a “narco state”.

Narco business has emerged as virtually the only economy of Afghanistan and is valued at some $10 billion a year. Opium trade is estimated by the U.N. to be equivalent to 53 per cent of the country’s official economy and is helping to finance the Taliban.

“Unfortunately, they [NATO] are doing nothing to reduce the narcotic threat from Afghanistan even a tiny bit,” Putin angrily remarked three years ago. He accused the coalition forces of “sitting back and watching caravans haul drugs across Afghanistan to the former Soviet Union and Europe.” As time went by, Russian suspicions regarding the U.S. role in the rise of a narco state in Afghanistan grew deeper, especially after reports from Iraq said that the cultivation of opium poppies was spreading rapidly there too.

“The Americans are working hard to keep narco business flourishing in both countries,” says Mikhail Khazin, president of the consultancy firm Niakon. “They consistently destroy the local infrastructure, pushing the local population to look for illegal means of subsistence. And the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] provides protection to drug trafficking.”

U.S. freelance writer Dave Gibson recalled in an article published in American Chronicle in December what a U.S. foreign intelligence official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told NewsMax.com in March 2002 of the CIA’s record of involvement with the international drug trade. The official said: “The CIA did almost the identical thing during the Vietnam War, which had catastrophic consequences – the increase in the heroin trade in the USA beginning in the 1970s is directly attributable to the CIA. The CIA has been complicit in the global drug trade for years, so I guess they just want to carry on their favourite business.”

Now Russia has joined the fray accusing the U.S. military of involvement in the heroin trafficking from Afghanistan to Europe. The Vesti channel’s report from Afghanistan said that drugs from Afghanistan were hauled by American transport aircraft to the U.S. airbases Ganci in Kyrgyzstan and Incirlik in Turkey.


And if NATO is helping to get raw materials to processors, then we know Turkey has to be involved. It's widely known that Turkey consolidated its drug trade under the government in the 1990s. It's also widely known that Turkey's narcotics industry was tightly connected with the Deep State and NATO's Gladio program, which the Susurluk Affair exposed.

More recently, Sibel Edmonds has pointed the finger at Turkey's pre-eminent role in the heroin industry. As she noted, "In Turkey everything is run by the military. These activities cannot take place without the permission of the military and the permission of Turkish intelligence," and she doubted that Turkey could extricate itself from it's heroin-based cash cow because, "The sums of money are huge. If it stopped it would cause an economic crash."

The FBI's initial interest in the American Turkish Council (ATC) came about as a result of suspicion that it was bringing drug money to the US in order to bribe congressmen.

Is Russia correct in its accusations against NATO's involvement in the heroin industry? Without a doubt, and it goes hand-in-hand with the bullshit Global War on Terror, Inc.

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