Rick: Don’t you sometimes wonder if it’s worth all this? I mean what you’re fighting for.
Victor Laszlo: You might as well question why we breathe. If we stop breathing, we’ll die. If we stop fighting our enemies, the world will die.
Rick: Well, what of it? It’ll be out of its misery.
Victor Laszlo: You know how you sound, Mr. Blaine? Like a man who’s trying to convince himself of something he doesn’t believe in his heart.
The significance of the tragic deaths of three DEA agents in Afghanistan has largely been missed by the main stream media.
Why were they there? What were they doing? Why does it matter?
The New York Times, for example, dithered today as only it can about the — gasp — “news” that the CIA has been doling out cash in Afghanistan. CIA? Doling out cash among factions? To paraphrase Captain Renault in Casablanca, “I am shocked, shocked!” Just kidding. Yawn. See, for example, Gary C. Schroen’s Here is an illustrative excerpt of that first-hand account of the CIA’s contribution to the original rout of the Taliban:
I suggested to Rick that we offer to provide the Northern Alliance $500,000 for the local purchase of food and other humanitarian goods. He agreed, and we got out the black suitcase to count and wrap the money. I was especially grateful for the extra funds we had received the night before, because this payment to the Northern Alliance would have left us with only a little over $120,000 of the original $3 million we had brought with us. (Page 175)
Half-a-million here, half-a million there. Pretty soon it adds up to some real money. Hello? Afghanistan is one of those places (there are so many in the world) where B—S–t walks and money talks.
To the MSM, this is news. The other war — the drug war — in Afghanistan is a haze, a sideshow, and a distraction.
Here, however, are excerpts from two sources that demonstrate that other war’s centrality to not only the fighting in Afghanistan, but to the defense of Western civilization.
Statement for the Record
Wednesday, October 21, 2009, By Michael A. Braun Before the U. S. Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control Regarding ‘U.S. Counternarcotics Strategy in Afghanistan’
The Continued Evolution of the Taliban,
And 21st Century Global Organized Crime
The Taliban is following in the footsteps of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and at least 20 other terrorist groups designated by our nation, into a ‘hybrid terrorist organization.’ The Taliban was merely an insurgent group just a few short years ago, but they are now clearly one part designated terrorist organization—and one part global drug trafficking cartel.
Just like the FARC, the Taliban got its start in the global drug trade by simply taxing poor farmers, which is one of the world’s oldest forms of organized criminal extortion. They then began taxing the movement of drugs and precursor chemicals within Afghanistan, and across its borders. Like the FARC, the Taliban formed ever-closer relations with traditional traffickers as they grew more accustomed and comfortable with each other, and the Taliban eventually started providing security at the traditional traffickers’ clandestine laboratories and cache sites. In the private sector, it is called ‘outsourcing.’
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The DEA reestablished its presence in Afghanistan in early 2003, after being forced from the country by the Soviet Union’s invasion in 1979. By 2005, the DEA clearly identified the Taliban’s involvement in protecting clandestine laboratory and drug cache sites for traditional traffickers. Flash forward just four short years. The Agency has unmistakably determined that the Taliban is now managing and operating major clandestine laboratories, drug cache sites, and poppy bazaars. They have morphed; they have become the manufactures and traffickers of heroin, opium, hashish and marijuana.
As an example, just two weeks ago the Counter Narcotics Police of Afghanistan and Afghan Army Commandos, supported by the DEA and U.S. military Special Forces, raided a major laboratory in Southern Afghanistan and seized approximately 1.8 metric tons of opium and heroin—a major haul by anyone’s calculations. It doesn’t stop there. Sixteen Taliban were killed at the site, and the evidence clearly reveals the group was involved in the manufacture of heroin.
What is even more troubling is the fact that Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) and IED bomb making materials were recovered at the scene, along with a host of other weapons and Taliban propaganda and training manuals. Thanks to strong support from our military, raids like this are now taking place weekly. IEDs and IED bomb making materials, suicide vests, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, other weapons, as well as Taliban propaganda and training manuals, are routinely located at these sites. Nearly all of those labs, cache sites and opium bazaars are directly linked to the DEA’s High Value Targets (HVTs) in Afghanistan, and they provide a treasure trove of evidence that support future prosecutions.
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The money generated by the Afghan opium and heroin trade is staggering, and most experts usually fail to consider how much money the Taliban derives from the hashish trade. In June 2008, the Counternarcotics Police of Afghanistan and Afghan Army Commandos, supported by the DEA and U.S. military Special Forces, raided a Taliban hashish processing facility near Spin Boldak in Southern Afghanistan where they seized 235 metric tons of the drug—by far the largest drug seizure in world history. The estimated Western European value of the drugs was over $600 million dollars. If the Taliban’s profit was just 5 percent, which is being overly conservative, they stood to gain $30 million dollars from the stash. Around the same time, the DEA and Afghan counterparts raided a HVT’s compound in Eastern Afghanistan and seized his drug ledgers, which clearly showed that $169 million dollars had moved through the traffickers hands for the sale of 81 metric tons of heroin over just a 10-month period. He is unequivocally affiliated with the Taliban, and is facing American justice.
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The Bottom Line
We are not going to win the fight in Afghanistan until we get the country’s drug production and trafficking activity in check, because it provides a limitless stream of funding directly into the Taliban’s war chest.
Professor James Fearon of Stanford University completed a study in 2002 entitled, “Why Some Wars Last Longer than Others.” The professor identified and studied 128 civil wars and insurgencies from 1945 to 2000, and found that on average they lasted about eight years. However, he identified and isolated 17 of the 128 that lasted on average about five times longer than the other 111—40 years or longer. The common thread between the 17 was that the anti-government forces involved in the conflicts generated their own contraband revenue, most of which was through their involvement in one or more aspects of the global drug trade.
Finally, the Taliban and traditional drug traffickers both thrive in what our military calls ‘ungoverned space.’ In Afghanistan, they share a truly symbiotic relationship. When traditional drug traffickers successfully destabilize government by corrupting officials—the Taliban benefits. When the Taliban successfully destabilizes government through attacks on government forces or by intimidating the populace—the drug traffickers benefit. They are both constantly working to destabilize government and create permissive environments in which to operate, because they flourish in areas of weak governance. Consequently, if you fight one with any less passion and vigor than you fight the other, you are most likely doomed to fail.
Winning The Mind Games
The foreign troops are the principal Taliban target, as it’s a big deal for the Taliban to “cast out the infidels (non-Moslems).” Failure has been constant. Increasing the IED attacks this year by about twelve times the 2005 level has yielded 250 dead foreign troops.
But that is not enough to defeat the foreign troops in a military sense. NATO casualties in Afghanistan are already lower than those in Iraq, which are, in turn, only a third of the casualty rates in Vietnam and World War II. Historically, you have to kill at least ten percent of a force to have any chance of defeating it. But this year, the Taliban and drug gangs will kill a quarter of percent (one in 400) of the foreign troops.
What the Taliban, and especially the drug gangs, want to do is use the foreign troops casualties to persuade the foreign governments to remove those troops. The main reason for all this is to enable the drug gangs to keep manufacturing (via growing and processing poppy plants) heroin. This has made many Afghans (mainly Pushtuns) unimaginably wealthy (not hard to do in the poorest nation in Eurasia). While the Taliban have illusions about ruling Afghanistan again, the majority of Afghans (especially the 60 percent who are not Pushtun) want none of that, and have the guns and determination to get their way. But with the foreign troops gone, the drug gangs can buy the cooperation of most warlords, politicians and tribal leaders in the country.
While the drug gangs are rich, they are not a military match for the foreign troops. So they are basically running a propaganda game on the foreign governments providing those troops. The deaths of those foreign troops are made to look like the harbinger of some military apocalypse. So while the Taliban and drug gangs are losing militarily, they are winning the mind games. What will most likely do them in will be the next realization, by the foreign governments, and media, that the growing availability of cheaper heroin is causing demands from the voters to “do something.” Eventually, too many people connect the dots, and the Taliban scam is undone.