Hidden Agenda behind the "War on Terrorism":
US Bombing of Afghanistan restores Trade in Narcotics

by Michel Chossudovsky- Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), globalresearch.ca

20 May 2002

In 2000, the Taliban government under advice from the United Nations Drug Control Program (UNDCP) imposed a total ban on opium production. Prior to the ban, according to the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) Afghanistan produced more than 70% of the world's opium in 2000, and about 80% of opiate products (meaning heroin) destined to the European market.1

The annual proceeds of the Afghan Golden Crescent drug trade (between 100 and 200 billion dollars) represented approximately one third of the worldwide annual turnover of narcotics, estimated by the United Nations to be of the order of $500 billion.2

In many regards, the trade in narcotics as well as the drug routes to the European and North American markets are considered to be "strategic". There are powerful financial interests behind the drug trade, which have a pervasive influence, behind the scenes, on the conduct of US foreign policy.

These multibillion dollar revenues of narcotics were deposited in the Western banking system. Most of the large international banks -together with their affiliates in the offshore banking havens-laundered large amounts of narco-dollars. In other words, Afghanistan, the poorest country on earth, was the source of tremendous financial wealth derived from the drug trade to financial institutions, business syndicates and organised crime. Part of the drug related revenues accrue to the CIA, which continues to protect both the Asian and Latin American drug trade. Visibly, only a very small percentage of these revenues stays in Afghanistan.

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Notes

1. BBC, Afghanistan's Opium Industry, 9 April 2002.

2. Douglas Keh, Drug Money in a Changing World, Technical document no 4, 1998, Vienna UNDCP, p. 4. See also United Nations Drug Control Programme, Report of the International Narcotics Control Board for 1999, E/INCB/1999/1 United Nations, Vienna 1999, p 49-51, and Richard Lapper, UN Fears Growth of Heroin Trade, Financial Times, 24 February 2000.

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