Drug Trafficking: The Watered Down Al Jazeera Version

Drug Trafficking Politics and Power: The Lost Territories

Al Jazeera

Film Review

This documentary mainly focuses on the role of Afghanistan in heroin production, of Colombia in cocaine production and of Mexico in smuggling cocaine, heroin and fentanyl into the US.

Despite a brief mention of the role of (nearly all) global major banking institutions in laundering illicit drug money, it makes no mention whatsoever of CIA involvement in international trafficking in Afghanistan and elsewhere. See Afghan, Heroin and the CIA, and articles by Peter Dale Scott and Alfred McCoy.*

In fact, the film gives the misleading impression that the Taliban is mainly responsible for Afghan heroin production, with some participation by Afghan warlords and members of former president Hamid Karzai’s government.

According to filmmakers, major heroin production began in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation, when the (CIA-financed and trained) Mujaheddin (1979-1992) helped finance their opposition Soviet occupation via (CIA-facilitated) opium and heroin production. Beginning in 1994, the Taliban would also rely on heroin production to finance their efforts to bring Afghanistan under their control.

In 2000, seeking global recognition of their legitimacy (and foreign aid), they banned heroin production and burned all the country’s opium plantations over the next year. The US reintroduced opium and heroin production to Afghanistan with their 2001 invasion and occupation.

The segments on Colombia and Mexico mainly focus on the ungovernability of both countries owing to the rise of paramilitary forces (in Colombia) and armed drug cartels (in Mexico).

With the rise of the Medellin cartel (1972-1993), cocaine traffickers organized their own paramilitaries, while FARC rebels had their own guerrilla groups (1964-2017). Following cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar’s death in 1993, Mexican drug cartels would take charge of global cocaine distribution. After 2003, they would add heroin and fentanyl to their inventories.

The film identifies Sinaloa, Jalisca New Generation, Gulf, Ciudad Juarez and Los Zetas as the major Mexican cartels. Each is identified with a specific geographic region, though turf struggles translate into constant boundary shifts. Each cartel also controls the extortion, kidnapping and human trafficking schemes for their region.*

When the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) ruled Mexico (1929-2000), they received a cut of the cartels’ drug profits. In return, they played a mediating role in disputes between cartels.

When the PRI was voted out of power in 2000, this mediating role ceased, which the film blames for Mexico’s massive increase in violence. More than 60,000 Mexicans have been murdered or disappeared since 2006.

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*Peter Dale Scott CIA Drug Trafficking and The Politics of Heroin

**Afghanistan currently produces 80% of the world’s heroin

***Criminals who engage in such activities must pay a “tax” to the drug cartel running their region.

The film can be viewed free at the Al Jazeera website: https://www.aljazeera.com/program/featured-documentaries/2021/1/25/drug-trafficking-politics-and-power-the-lost-territories

Does the 9-11 Timeline Date Back to 1977?

Solving 9-11: The Original Articles: Volume II

By Christopher Bollyn

Book Review – Part II

Link to Part  I:  Making Sense of 9-11

Bollyn maintains the the first evidence of a right wing Likud plot to attack a major New York building with airliners dates back to 1977,  when they first came to power in Israel. He emphasizes the involvement of early Likud leaders in the terrorist Stern Gang and Irgun, whose bombings and assassinations were responsible for driving the British out of Palestine in 1947. All three entities are notorious for their false flag terrorism, starting with the bombing (by Jewish terrorists disguised as Arabs of Jerusalem’s King David Hotel in 1946.*

He also provides compelling evidence that in 1983  Israeli military intelligence, headed by Ehud Barak, played a principal role in initiating a project to arm and train anti-Western mujaheddin (including Osama bin Laden) in Pakistan – a project co-funded by the CIA and Saudi Arabia. In 1994, these Israeli trained forces would morph into al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Bollyn’s timeline:

1977 – Likud comes to power in Israeal.

1978 – Top level (involved in in smuggling nuclear triggers to Israel) Mossad spy Arnon Milchon produces the British film The Medusa Touch, in which a 747 crashes into New York’s Panam building.

1979 – Likud rolls out their War on Terror doctrine at the 1979 Jerusalem Conference – attended by Bush senior and other world leaders.

1979 – former head of Israeli intelligence predicts Arab terrorists will bomb the tallest building in New York.

1982 – World Zionist Organization publishes plan for “balkanizing” the Middle East by breaking up major Arab countries into smaller ethnic and religious conclaves.

1982 – Israel invades Lebanon and Reagan sends 1,800 Marines to Beirut as peacekeepers.

1983 – Ehud Barak begins arming and training anti-Western Arabs in Pakistan, which morph into al-Qaeda and the Taliban in 1994

1985 – Top level Israeli spy Arnon Milchan produces Brazil, a science fiction film about a society subject to frequent senseless acts of terror whose government wages a continual war against terrorists in some distant land.

1987 – Two Mossad agents awarded security contract for the World Trade Center. Contract immediately canceled when the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey learn one of the applicants is using a false name.

1993 – World Trade Center hit by truck bomb explosion.

1993 – Mossad-linked Kroll Associates awarded security contract for the World Trade Center

2000 – Top Israeli spy Milchon and Rupert Murdoch co-produce The Lone Gunman TV series in which hijacked airliners are flown into the Twin Towers.

2000 – Zionist William Kristol (member of Emergency Committee for Israel) and Robert Kagan found Project for a New American Century, which calls for US occupation of Iraq.

July 2001 – World Trade Center privatized, with Larry Silverstein assuming 99-year lease on buildings 1-6. He already owned Building 7, which he built in 1980.

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*In a false flag event a political power deliberately commits a terrorist act which they attempt to blame on an enemy. Other notorious Israeli false flag events include

1954 – Israeli agents disguised as Muslim Brotherhood members bomb US and UK libraries in Egypt.

1967 – Israeli jets and torpedo boats attempt to sink the USS Liberty and frame Egypt for the attack.

1973 – Israeli agents masquerading as Islamic Jihad drive a massive truck bomb into US Marine barracks in Lebanon, killing

1986 – Masquerading as Libyan government agents, Mossad operatives send a series of terrorist orders to numerous Libyan embassies, fooling President Ronald Reagan into dropping over sixty tons of bombs on Libya.

 

Policing International Drug Trafficking in Iran

Drugs: No Way Out

Press TV (2018)

Film Review

This is a very interesting documentary about the role of Iranian customs officials  in disrupting the flow of Afghan heroin to Europe. At present, Afghanistan (thanks largely to the CIA) is the world largest producer of opium and heroin. Between 2001-2010, the Afghan opium/heroin trade took in over $68 billion in revenue. Of this, $66 billion went to the drug “mafia” (CIA?), $2 billion to the Afghan government and $200 million to the Taliban insurgency.

The principal (shortest) route for transporting heroin to the lucrative European market is via Turkmenistan, Iran and Turkey. Most of the illicit heroin is smuggled in trucks across the Turkmenistan border. Iranian customs officials also intercept a lot of diazepam (Valium) originating from Pakistan, where the drug is available without prescription.

At the Turkish border, Iran intercepts large volumes of hydrochloric and acetic acid. These chemicals are destined for Afghanistan, where they are used to refine opium into heroin. Large amounts of ephedrine (used to manufacture methamphetamine) and synthetic drugs (eg tramadol and ecstasy) are also intercepted at the Turkish border.

Inside Afghanistan’s Opium Trade

Afghan Overdose: Inside the Opium Trade

RT (2015)

Film Review

Afghan Overdose is an RT documentary that seems more geared for Russian than foreign consumption. Although the narrator is dubbed in English, actual dialogue is Russian or Farsi with subtitles.

As its northern neighbor, Russia is one of the primary destinations of Afghan heroin smugglers – roughly 30,000 Russians die of heroin overdose annually. The Russian government is so concerned about their heroin epidemic that they routinely provide the Afghan government with satellite imagery of the country’s heroin labs.

Segments from so-called opium “raids” leave no doubt the government’s heroin eradication efforts are purely cosmetic. Because the 15 1/2 year war with the US has totally destroyed the nation’s infrastructure, opium production is the only source of livelihood open to tens of thousands of residents

The arrival of ISIS in Afghanistan – who oppose the Taliban – only contributes to the overall chaos and instability.

The film’s only weakness is its lack of historical or political perspective. According to RT, opium production is the primary source of revenue for the Taliban (who control most of the country outside of Kabul). However it’s not clear how the Taliban switched over from being adamantly anti-opium prior to the US invasion to relying on it as their primary source of revenue.

It’s intriguing to hear to anti-Taliban locals talking about the US/CIA creating the Taliban as a cover for their heroin trafficking, about NATO soldiers fighting alongside the Taliban against anti-Taliban warlords and about US troops that directly engage in various aspects of opium production. I think this would have been a better documentary were some of these lines of inquiry pursued.

 

The 14 Year War the US Lost

Two days ago, Obama announced he was redeploying  several hundred more troops to Afghanistan as “advisers” to the Afghan army, while grossly minimizing the reality that the Taliban controls most of the country outside of Kabul. 

This is Taliban Country

Al Jazeera (2014)

Film Review

In This is Taliban Country a Danish journalist visits Afghanistan to examine the ongoing campaign by the Taliban to win the “hearts and minds” of the civilian population in the regions under their control.

It’s an open secret that the US lost their 14 year war on the Taliban, even before Obama’s partial draw down of US troops in 2014-2015.* The Taliban, which controls large swathes of territory outside of Kabul, generally enjoys the support of civilians under their rule. They provide the security and stability most Afghans crave after decades of civil war. Moreover they do so far more benevolently than either the corrupt Afghan government with their network of warlords or US occupiers.

For civil complaints (land disputes, unpaid bills, etc), most residents prefer the Taliban courts to the corrupt government courts (the verdict always depends on who you know). The interpretation of Shariah law varies depending on locale, but most inflict “cruel and unusual” punishments (stoning, chopping off hands and occasionally heads) for serious “crimes” such as adultery.

The Taliban is currently engaged in an ambitious PR campaign to improve their public image as they consolidate their power in Afghanistan. They have allowed some state schools to reopen, including a few primary schools for girls. There is little support for girls’ secondary education, as most Afghan girls marry when they reach puberty.

Taliban leaders claim to have learned from past mistakes. It’s no longer a crime for men to shave their beards or women to appear in public without a burqa. Unlike fifteen years ago, when they first took power, they now allow smoking cigarettes and marijuana and watching TV. Music is still banned.

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*Obama halted the withdrawal of US troops in October 2015, when he announced five to ten thousand troops would remain in Afghanistan through 2017.

Reducing Foreign Policy to Good vs Evil

Bitter Lake

by Adam Curtis (BBC) 2015

Film Review

By now, people will have noticed I’m a bit of an Adam Curtis fanatic (Curtis also produced The Century of the Self). Like all his documentaries, Bitter Lake focuses on propaganda and ideological manipulation by the political elite. This film traces how fanatical Muslim sects like the Taliban and ISIS are the direct result of western colonization of the Middle East – and how US and British leaders deliberately deceive their citizens by reducing foreign policy to a simple metric of good and evil.

In Afghanistan, this oversimplification created an extraordinary dilemma for US and British troops and confronting the spontaneous Afghan insurgency that opposed the occupation. They naively believed they were bringing democracy to Afghanistan. In reality, they were substantially increasing the power and brutality of corrupt, heroin-trafficking war lords. The documentary artfully intersperses great footage of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan with video from the more recent US occupation. The parallels between the two are uncanny.

Roosevelt’s Meeting with the Saudi King

The film takes its title from a 1945 meeting Roosevelt had with Ibn Saud, the king of Saudi Arabia, at Bitter Lake on the Suez Canal. The purpose of the meeting was to draw up a mutual security agreement that would keep Saudi oil fields under US control.

Curtis goes on to trace the rise of Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia, starting with the Wahhabist Bedouins who first brought the House of Saud to power in 1932. There was constant tension between the Saudi princes, who sought to modernize Saudi Arabia, and the Whahhabists, who opposed all imperialist development and sought to transform the country into a seventh century caliphate.

In 1964, King Faisal sought to alleviate this tension by sending the Wahhabists abroad to fight the growing influence of communism in the Muslim world. With US support, he used them to set up up madrassa throughout the Muslim world to train low income boys in Wahhabism.

The Economic Impact of Higher Oil Prices

In 1973 the US-Saudi relationship experienced a major breakdown when the US sided with Israel in its war against its Arab neighbors. By quintupling the price of oil, King Faisal forced the US and Israel to agree to a ceasefire.

The higher oil prices led to a total transformation of the global economic system. It caused mucho petrol dollars to flood into the Middle East, which the Saudis and other Mid East governments turned over to US and British banks to invest for them. This would provide the impetus for the “financialization” of the global economy, in which western capitalism would abandon manufacturing to focus on creating and selling financial products.

Higher prices for all commodities would also result in massive economic instability in the western world over the next seven years. A steep reduction in manufacturing jobs and wages would led to widespread popular unrest, which would bring right wing governments to power in most western democracies.

The Soviet Invasion

Curtis carefully outlines the historical events in Afghanistan that would lead to the overthrow of the monarchy in 1973, the Marxist revolution in 1978, the Soviet invasion in 1979 and the US/Saudi collaboration to recruit Saudi Wahhabists to defeat the Soviet occupation. The most prominent of these freedom fighters, known as the Mujahideen, was a Saudi highway engineer and CIA asset known as Osama bin Ladin.

Reducing Foreign Policy to Good vs Evil

Like Ronald Reagan, George W Bush attempted to reduce the US role in Afghanistan to a simple battle of good vs evil. The political reality was far more complex. US and Saudi intervention during the Soviet occupation brought corrupt warlords to power who supported their fiefdoms through Afghanistan’s heroin trade.

The Taliban, consisting mainly of Afghan orphans raised in Pakistani Madrassa, were primarily driven by a desire to end the heroin trade and this endemic corruption, which they (rightly) blamed on the interference of western imperialists in their country’s domestic affairs.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2hdcji_bitter-lake-2015-adam-curtis-documentary-1-of-3-720p_shortfilms

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2hdd54_bitter-lake-2015-adam-curtis-documentary-2-of-3-720p_shortfilms

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2hde2l_bitter-lake-2015-adam-curtis-documentary-3-of-3-720p_shortfilms

How the CIA Funds Jihad

The Power of Nightmares

Directed by Adam Curtis

BBC (2003)

Part 2 The Phantom Victory

Film Review

Part 2 focuses on the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan between 1979 and 1989 – and how the CIA funded and trained the Islamist Mujahideen to combat the occupation.

Both Carter’s National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and the neoconservatives claim credit for the hare-brained and incredibly short sighted scheme to recruit, fund and train a jihadist army in Afghanistan. In addition to providing sophisticated weaponry, the CIA trained the Mujahideen in terror techniques, such as assassination, car bombs and improvised explosive devices (IDEs).

Abdullah Azzam, the Palestinian who led the Mujahideen, put out a call for all Muslims to join Afghanistan’s holy war. He believed that victory in Afghanistan would inspire foreign fighters to return to their homelands and overthrow corrupt secular dictators the US was propping up.

One Saudi who answered this call was a phenomenally wealthy construction contractor named Osama bin Laden. He, too, provided funding for the Mujahideen.

Arab governments, recognizing a unique opportunity to expel their own jihadist troublemakers, opened their jails and exiled their Islamic extremists to Afhanistan. Egypt released Islamic Jihad founder Dr Zawahiri and his followers.

Gorbachov Orders Soviet Withdrawal

In 1987 when Gorbachov came to power, the Soviet Union was on the brink of economic collapse. Believing he could still save it through political reform, Gorby quickly commenced Soviet troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. He also reached out to the Bush senior administration to help install a stable government in Kabul. He warned that failure to do so would allow the Mujahideen to install an Islamic dictatorship. The neoconservatives who ran the Pentagon and State Department refused. With Pakistani support, the Mujahideen (renamed the Taliban) took control of Afghanistan and installed a brutal fundamentalist regime.

Both the neoconservatives and the Taliban/Mujahideen would claim sole credit for victory over the Soviets in Afghanistan. Both groups (and Zbigniew Brzezinski) would also credit US intervention in Afghanistan for the demise of the Soviet Union. In reality the USSR collapsed due to gross economic mismanagement and internal decay.

The Split Between Azzam and Zawahiri

Following the Soviet withdrawal, a major rift occurred between Zawahiri and Azzam. As it turned out, torture also radicalized Zawahiri. Who now proclaimed that politicians who were in bed with the Americans – and their civilian supporters – were legitimate targets for assassination.

Azzam, in contrast, compelled Islamic freedom fighters to swear an oath not to kill innocent civilians. Osama Bin Laden, former deputy to Azzam, joined forces with Zawahiri shortly before the latter’s assassination in 1989.

By the early nineties, powerful movements the Islamic Jihad (and related groups) had built in Egypt and Algeria were on track to win national elections. Aided by the US and France, the Algerian military launched a coup and cancelled the Algerian elections. Egypt, in turn, banned the Muslim Brotherhood and arrested and tortured their leadership.

Islamic Jihad responded by attempting to launch violent jihad in both countries. Owing to their failure to attract a mass following, in May 1998 Zawahuri and Bin Laden would announce a new strategy: taking jihad to their real enemies: the US and Israel.

Meanwhile Back in Washington

Following the fall of the Soviet Union, the neoconservatives were more committed than ever to promoting the myth that the US was the sole force for good in a world of evil regimes. Fingering Saddam Hussein as the next satan to be overthrown, in 1990 they put immense pressure on Bush senior to overthrow the Iraqi government during the first Gulf War. Bush wisely took the sage advice of Pentagon advisers who warned that a full scale invasion of Iraq would result in a hopeless quagmire.

Mainstream Republicans Back Clinton

In 1992, mainstream Republicans, frightened by the religious fundamentalism that had overtaken the Republican Party, voted for Clinton in droves. The neocons, in turn, latched onto Clinton as the new evil. They began a vicious propaganda campaign against him, spearheaded by the conservative American Spectator. The campaign widely disseminated spurious allegations that the Clintons had committed financial fraud in Whitewater*, murdered their friend Vince Foster and participated in drug smuggling at the Mena Airport in Arkansas.**

Under immense pressure, Clinton agreed to appoint Kenneth Starr as special prosecutor to investigate these allegations. Starr couldn’t find any evidence of Clinton wrongdoing until he stumbled onto the President’s affair with Monica Lewinsky.

Following their failure to impeach Clinton, the neocons became as marginalized in the US as Bin Laden, Zawahiri and their ragtag followers in the Arab world.

All this would change with 9-11, which would propel both the Islamists and the neocons.

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*The Whitewater controversy involved a questionable real estate deal Clinton engaged in while he was attorney general of Arkansas. The Whitewater investigations would result in criminal convictions for several of Clinton’s associates. Although there was insufficient evidence to file criminal charges against the President, his conduct was clearly unethical: see Whitewater Scandal

**While there’s no evidence Governor Clinton was directly involved in cocaine smuggling, he was unresponsive to strong grassroots demand that he investigate the CIA’a drug-gun smuggling operation at the Mena Airport – and to Ross Perot’s (presidential candidate in 1992 and 1996) request that Clinton back the Internal Revenue’s investigation of Menta.