When China attempted to crack down on this
illegal opium trade, as millions of Chinese became addicts, the British Merchants sought help from the British Government in 1839. They got it in the form of a naval fleet. The far superior weaponry of the British forces meant that in 1842 the Chinese were forced to sue for peace with crushing economic, political, and military terms including vast reparations, more ports opened to Europeans, and Britain taking ownership of Hong Kong. The
Chinese rebelled against these dishonorable terms and a second Opium War happened in 1856, leading to a joint British-French Force crushing the Chinese forces one more time. The opium trade was legalized in China, and millions of Asians and Europeans suffered the horrific effects of addiction thereafter. That is how it was done in the 18-19th Century.
Fast forward to present-day Afghanistan. Prior to NATO and USA invading Afghanistan, opium was banned by The Taliban, who saw it as un-Islamic. The trade continued however at very low production rates in 2001, the year the USA invaded Afghanistan. Since the invasion, however, Afghanistan started to produce 90% of the world’s opium, most of which ended up in Western Europe or Russia and reaching an all-time high in 2014. Why the increase? Is it in part attributed to the war-torn nation not being able to produce anything else, or more likely there is a correlation between the rise of Afghan Opium production and the presence of US Forces in Afghanistan? The rise in US consumption of opium medications based, of which they also, interestingly enough, consume 90% of the world’s supply.
Is America’s Pharmaceutical Corporations Drug Cartels whose supply of drugs is protected by US Military and Military Private Contractor Agencies?
Afghan heroin has killed over a million people worldwide since Operation Enduring Freedom began, and over a trillion dollars have been invested into transnational organized crime from drug sales. Vicktor Ivanov, a present-day businessman, and former High ranking KGB Officer) said “any impartial observer must admit the sad fact that the international community has failed to curb heroin production in Afghanistan since the start of the NATO Operation”(P.E.Freedom). The United Nations have shown that Afghan production of opium has increased 35-fold since the US led invasion, from 185 tons in 2001 to 6,400 last year.
According to Mainstream Media prior to the US occupation of Afghanistan, the lucrative opium trade was being protected by President Obama, the Taliban, and local Afghan warlords, all in defiance of the international community. It was said the opium trade was filling the Taliban’s coffers, when in fact it was a huge source of revenue for the US Government, its intelligence and military contractor communities, and Big Pharma.
Under CIA and Pakistan Military protection, Pakistan and Afghan resistance opened many heroin labs along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Once the heroin left these labs, 60% of this heroin was captured by American, Pakistani, or Afghan troops. That is to say, sixty percent of US heroin came indirectly from a CIA-Governmental/Private Contractor operation.
Questioning this logic? Well, we know the British Government was manipulated and pressured by British Corporations to not only attack the Chinese Homeland but invade China several times. This process resulted in the creation and spread of Opium/Heroin Addictions throughout Asia and the world. Think America is higher than mighty example greater than the British Empire? I think not.
Russia and China have their own designs for Afghanistan. Russia see’s the Afghan Market as clients for weapons and the greatest source of heroin and opium for the Russian Drug market. China needs Afghanistan as a stepping stone to Eurasia and The EU. America has realized that they do not need to have their troops in Afghanistan. They have learned how to use private armies such as military contractors to do their bidding.
The UK and America decry drug dealing, drug addiction, yet they are their own greatest enemies. They are the greatest source of their own addiction pain. All for money$$$. You have seen the historical facts showing what a consortium of Corporations, Governmental intelligence agencies have done throughout history, and what they can do in the name of peacekeeping, population protections, and national security.
Super Powers’ claims of protecting freedom and trying to end tyrannies is seemingly propaganda. There are those who only see profits, coercion, power within the very world on which America has built this Empire.
Steven Kaszab
Bradford, Ontario
skaszab@yahoo.ca
