Truing the record 081909

It appears that the Cheney/Rumsfeld School for polmil (political militarist) has again been caught manufacturing information. A recent investigation by intelligence agencies and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee finds that estimates of the Taliban’s profit from the drug trade are wildly inflated.

The report concluded that the estimated amount of drug money flowing to the Taliban is only about $70 million a year. The report went even further by stating that “there is no evidence that any significant amount of the drug proceeds go to al-Qaida.” Even this figure may prove to be inflated as the polmil continues to report great disruption of al-Qaida/Taliban financing every time the U.S. military captures a kilo of drugs.

While this information may be disconcerting to those who bought into DOD’s disinformation it begins to vindicate those long vilified regional professionals.

Ideological Taliban leaders, as fundamentalist Muslims, never supported Afghanistan’s drug trade. When Taliban finally gained control of government they officially banded opium production. This could be expected of a fundamentalist movement aware of over 1300 years of Islamic doctrine. Opium production fell to almost zero in part due to their draconian punishments and to trafficker stockpiles from previous over production. Opium production continued in the region controlled by the Northern Alliance.

Since the United States over threw the Taliban government opium production has grown even larger providing over 90 percent of the worlds opium supply. Opium poppy cultivation has also spread across the country outside of the traditional growing areas. The explanation of this resurgence is that while Taliban fundamentalists still oppose opium, there are many opportunists who joined the movement for its protection and power that are profiting from that protection. As in Christianity, in Islam there are those that choose greed over faith. It is problematic as to how much of the estimated $70 will actually end up supporting Taliban fundamentalist objectives.

The Senate report states that the United States contributed to the resurgent drug trade by backing warlords and drug traffickers in its drive to oust the Taliban. "These warlords later traded on their stature as U.S. allies to take senior positions in the new Afghan government, laying the groundwork for the corrupt nexus between drugs and authority that pervades the power structure today."

The Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai has continuously been linked to corruption and connections to drug trafficking. Despite these links the U.S. polmil has supported the Karzai presidency through four “democratic” processes and appears to be supporting his current run for reelection.

This begs the question, is Afghan Taliban or the United States military more responsible for the worlds opiate addiction?