The book Drugging America, provides facts and testimonies of government and the CIA insiders of the agency personnel’s joint ventures with drug-lords and local crime network for smuggling drugs into the United States. This smuggling for long has been covered up by the judicial department whereas on the contrary scores of Americans with peanut drug quantities have been jailed for life depicting the double standards practiced by the judiciary. Such has been the suspicion on US War against Terror that both the Afghan and Iraq invasion are now referred to as war for oil and drugs.
According to a report in The Economist in August 2003, the Afghan-Taliban regime headed by Mullah Omar banned poppy cultivation in 2000 and production fell from 4500 tons to 185 tons. This gesture was merely an economic ace as the demand was 3000 tons compared to supply of 185 tons. The Taliban earned a profit of $2 billion and no official from the CIA or US government uttered a word against this maneuver. After the fall of Taliban, the US-installed Karzai regime. Though the regime explicitly banned opium, implicitly its production level rose again to 4500 tons in 2003. This rise in production was a clear indication about the US and CIA’s back door support of drug trafficking through Afghanistan.
Recent reports from Britain – the major donor of counter narcotics – have led to the evidence that drug money from Afghanistan is primarily being used to fund terrorism in the country. This activity being carried out under the hold of US-Nato force has led the world into a daze by not digesting the fact of incompetence of these highly specialized forces for countering narcotics trade from Afghanistan. One wonders the army that has haunted down scores of Al Qaeda and Taliban terrorists has failed to track and eliminate the drug trafficking routes in the country.
This leads to the definite conclusion of high cadre involvement from the CIA and Nato in the process of illegal drug trade. The lethargic justification for minimal counter narcotics measures comes down to the fear of farmers being hired by the high-paying Taliban to the inductees but that could not be leveraged for a social evil that has vandalized many states of the world including the USA. At the end of 2010, farmers got $940 per kilo of opium, 10 times more than the rate in 2002, which no other crop could yield. In 2010, opium production in Afghanistan generated up to $2.8 billion, or almost 25% of GDP most of which was distributed among Taliban, drug traffickers and the corrupt elements in Afghan regime.
The preceding and current US regimes could have earned a good name worldwide by taking strong corrective measure to counter narcotics but the case is opposite. There have been least crack downs against the drug lords coupled with counter allegations on Iran for supporting and funding the drug lords and Taliban. The baseless leveling of US allegations and lack of support for Iranian and Russian counter drug measures unveils the implicit policy of the US law enforcement agencies for supporting drug trade, promoting religious fundamentalism and imposing expansion policy on the weaker allies. If not treated properly, drugs can become the biggest enemy of America surpassing Taliban and Al-Qaeda and could come back to haunt the prospective generations of the country.