Heroin, and the U.S.-Funded Bridge That Moves It
Despite official claims of a drop in drug traffic, opium and heroin business is booming on the Afghanistan-Tajkistan border, in part thanks to a $37 million, U.S.-built bridge touted in 2007 as "a critical transit route for trade and commerce." After years of throwing, carrying, ferrying or floating on car tires their sacks of heroin across the muddy Panj River, traffickers are now moving so much heroin with so much ease that villages in the dirt-poor Tajkistan's border area are dotted with Mercedes'.
"You load the truck with drugs," explains truck driver Mohammed with a toothy smile.
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6 Comments so far
Show All"Business as usual" is pretty much it.
If the CIA was in the dope business in Southeast Asis 40 years ago, and in Central America 25 years ago, it's a safe bet the Agency is still in the business today in Southwest Asia.
When the Taliban came into power, they banned poppy growing. Just about zero crops under their regime.
We could speculate that since the plans to attack/bomb Afghanistan were already on the table at the Pentagon in June of 2001, and an at-the-ready memo circulated on September 8, 2001, this was another reason the Twin Towers were scheduled to fall on September 11, 2001, with attack plans on Afghanistan implemented in very short order.
Since the Taliban's overthrow, the poppy crop has been replanted and successfully grown each year and reached about a 95 per cent success rate within a few years. Tracing the heroin trafficking, one comes up with the network of the usual suspects leading to the usual profiteers.
We ain't gonna' get out of Afghanistan for a very long time. Between pipelines for gas and oil and pipes for opium smoking, everything is just dreamy for the richest in the world to become even richer.
What a thick network of dirty and monkey business there is even as the U.S. continues to fight the "War on Drugs." INSANITY? INSANITY? INSANITY? or just some very bad people on the planet who carry on very successful "business-as-usual" endeavors no matter what kind of businesses they front as the respectable, elite wealthy of old families, royal houses, and such, or the nouveau riche who make it and become acceptable and respectable because of the size and substance of their bank accounts and holdings. You'll find the top profiteers on every continent or with homes and holdings on just about every continent except for the Arctic and Antarctica, but that can change with the oil discoveries and drilling under the sea as those continents' glaciers and ice packs melt.
So many people have died because of this "business model" of "GET IT any way you can," whatever the IT is to make profits.
The Gravy Train one day will be stopped or derail and fall off the track.
And that thought leads to all kinds of scenarios, none of which are particularly pleasant to contemplate.
Since I've made myself unhappy enough just thinking about all of this again, I'll stop there.
Have a nice day.
/cm
What? An extremist group can shut down the poppy crop but the mighty U.S. military can't? I don't believe it!
Cons are wasting trillions on the WOD.
and
Cons are making trillions on the WOD
Well no wonder Obama has quit poppy eradication - it's bad for business!
I propose we name this bridge the Lt. Col. Oliver North Memorial Lost Causeway.