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The Village That Feeds UK's Heroin Habit
Calling Chuttu the "smack smuggler's superstore," a "one stop shop for heroin traffickers," this article from the distinguished British newspaper The Observer claims that Pakistan's law enforcement officials estimate that two-thirds of all the smack in England goes through this village first. Here it is not unusual for individual stall keepers to have ten tons of opium in stock. Often, the heroin from Chuttu, Afghanistan will transit that recent site of US interventionism, the Balkans, where the former KLA are now in charge of nearly all drug trafficking in and out of that area.
Poor Afghans Grow Addicted To The Profits From the Poppy
This article points out that even though the poppy farmers may know that what they grow is harming others, they cannot stop, as they can't make a living growing anything else.
60% More Opium Hits Market
Here is an estimate of 5000 tons of opium produced this year, more than double the 1998 crop. Authorities are becoming so desperate, they are beginning to help Iran with equipment and funds to help fight drug traffickers, but certainly not to help treat addicts, as well as discuss ways of shutting down the borders of other countries alongside Afghanistan.
Southwest Asia
An Observtoire Geopolitque des Drogues report (1997), focusing upon the Golden Crescent (including Afghanistan), now the largest producer of illicit opium products in the world. These people haven't brought out any new information in a couple years, but it is worth a look for research purposes.
Woman's Association of the Women of Afghanistan
If you are freedom loving, and anti-fundamentalist, then you are with RAWA. RAWA is an organization struggling for peace, freedom, democracy, and women's rights in fundamentalism-blighted Afghanistan, says the opening page of this site. Much more attention needs to be brought to these ongoing atrocities being committed upon women in Afghanistan as a way of life.
International Drug Control Strategy Report: March, 1999, Southwest Asia
US Department of State report on Afghanistan and the US plans for fighting a branch of the Drug War there. "There have been no major drug control objectives achieved in 1998." UNDCP's Sandro Tucci told me recently without a snicker that the Taliban had destroyed four hundred hectares of poppies in 1999, as though it was some kind of serious effort to be impressed by. In 1998, the Taliban burned one ton of opium gum, putting on another show of co-operation for Western Drug Warriors. This is the report in which it is admitted that the 1999 plan to assist in the fight against drug production in Afghanistan was to facilitate the watering of all the fields where co-incidentally the Afghanis are growing all the opium.
The Most Sexist Regime In The World
The Taliban's Department for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice is the gang of misogynist devils who are effectively locking up an entire nation of women. How this has been allowed to take place without the rest of the world's women rising up in the loudest of anger is beyond me, when my own experiences with women have shown me that women normally do not stand for this kind of treatment. What happened in Afghanistan to make them take this so? Because they are suffering under a fundamentalist regime that is completely uneducated, though they call themselves students, the Taliban. A truly frightening situation where a woman outside alone can be grabbed and beaten, where a woman who tries to prosecute for rape can herself be prosecuted for adultery. I want to throw up now.
Taliban: God's Holy Warriors, Warriors, or The Devil's Militia?
The Taliban is a military and political force trained and built by Pakistan, asserts this site. Not hard to believe after recent events in Pakistan, where the military has taken over the country, put the Prime Mintister on trial for treason, and all the while the US tells the world it will give them two years to reinstall a genuine democratic system of government. Two years, huh? That's all? It is no wonder that no one is helping those poor women out.
Taliban's Man in Queens NY Wants UN to Listen
Ignored by the UN and not recognized as the official government representative (though that hasn't stopped the UNDCP from working with someone in Taliban controlled areas), the Taliban's representative in New York City bemoans his lack of popularity.
UNODCCP Update
The UN Office of Drug Control and Crime Prevention, of which the UNDCP is a subgroup, puts out a newsletter. This interesting issue (October 1999) is definately worth a look. Requires free Adobe Acrobat Reader to view.
Holy Men of Heroin
A surprisingly astute article from Newsweek, detailing the ordeals of a worker in one of the opium processing factories, who became severely addicted due to the fumes from the "steam from boiling vats of opium gum." Some of these guys even cut their scalp to rub opium or heroin into the wound, believing that it will get to the brain faster that way. Would education help these people maybe? Or should the West simply continue to sell Afghanistan more weapons of war?
UK and Pakistan Working Together to Tackle Drugs
This January 1999 article discusses the cooperation between these two countries to cut down on the opium and other drugs flowing out of Afghanistan, into Pakistan and on to Europe, particularly Britain. Here there is mention of a US$6.5 million expenditure by the UN in Afghanistan in 1998, although this type of spending was denied by Tucci in a December 1999 interview, when he limited his spending disclosures to US$3 million only over the previous eighteen month period.
US Made Afghan Land Fertile: To Grow Opium
In 1997, US officials were already talking about the tripled opium crops that year. "American officials are painfully aware that Afghan land made fertile thanks to several hundred million dollars from American taxpayers now produces opium for American and European addicts . . . Seldom have American good intentions abroad gone so wrong." The US built dams all over in the 1950s that now, after 20 years of war, enable Afghanistan to continue raising these unprecedented amounts of poppies. In 1999, the US government pledged US$1 million to help eradicate the poppy crop, by "focusing on rehabilitating the Boghra Canal, repairing underground irrigation channels, and crop substitution."
Flourishing Opium Trade Contradicts Islamic Ban
In 1997, the Taliban were insisting that they had begun a major crackdown on Opium growing, but as history now shows us,that was a load of bull, and still is today. Is anyone listening in the UNDCP? The Taliban are lying, and making loads of money off the drug trade.
How The Taliban Took Power in Afghanistan
Just after taking power, the Taliban found favor with some US officials who saw their hostility to Iran as a plus. Now Iran is receiving anti-drug assistance in its fight against the Afghanistan Traffickers, and the whole picture is changed. Initially the US had high hopes for the Taliban, but those hopes were quickly dashed.
US Says Osama bin Laden Has Had Falling Out With Taliban
Yeah, don't we wish! But this was in March 1999, so it looks as though once again that $27 billion or so budget for the CIA has gone to good use. Used for what is not too clear, but it had to go somewhere.
Heroin Labs Still Exist in Nangerhar Province
Although the Taliban claim to have been conducting destruction of labs and drug crops, in reality there is almost no sign that any destruction has taken place at all.
Transnational Radical Party
This is the organization that convinced the EU Parliment to block all funding for specific projects to Afghanistan over the continued abuses of women's rights, and the complete lack of Taliban cooperation in stopping the rampant drug trafficking and production within Afghanistan. Click on the 'Drugs' icon, then look for 'Afghanistan'.
Help Expel Bin Laden, US Tells Pakistan
This Times of India report tells of how the US is asking for Pakistan's help in getting Osama bin Laden expelled from Afghanistan, as they have some leverage with the Taliban.
Drugs and Jewels Help Pay For War
War has become a way of life in Afghanistan: the entire society become criminalized; paying for weapons and equipment, ammunition and supplies, completely with drugs (although this article mentions jewels too).
Afghanistan: Deadly Harvest Benefits Opposites
Even this relatively decent Nashua Telegraph article (March 12, 2000) says that hashish is made from HEMP, which is just more anti-hemp propaganda. How this slipped by the editors cannot be fathomed! This piece also gets into how the UN is being thanked by opium farmers in Afghanistan for building them irrigation systems for their crops, and for giving them food seed, so they do not have to worry about where they are going to get food, while they grow their poppies.
Osama bin Laden Still Alive Because He Changed His Plans
There is a great satellite photo of Osama bin Laden's training camp in Afghanistan; the one that the US missiled in August 1998; the one that the US helped build years ago, when US intelligence agencies including the CIA, would help train Afghani 'freedom fighters' to battle the Soviets.
Buried Alive: Women Under Taliban Rule
I have trouble believing these reports when I read them, thinking to myself that no self respecting man would allow someone else to tell his sister or wife how to dress, that she can't go to school, or go outside, or be seen by a male doctor, or that she could get whipped for breaking a religious edict, but obviously there is an entire nation of men who have allowed that to happen exactly.
Maps of Afghanistan
The following maps were produced by the CIA unless otherwise noted, states this site. After the "accidental" bombing of the Chinese embassy during the 1999 Balkans Crisis - supposedly due to the use of old CIA maps - this does not give me much faith in these maps (but they are worth a look anyway).
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