7

Afghanistan

Introduction

A separate chapter on Afghanistan is warranted because of the unfortunate turn of events since 11 September 2001. Evidences clearly show that the combined US–NATO attack on Afghanistan is actually the beginning of larger occupation—perhaps dismemberment of a few countries—of South Asia.

Afghanistan’s geography has been its enemy—the country straddles between West, South and Central Asia where world’s largest oil and gas reserves are located. But before the horrific reality of Afghanistan is documented, it is worth considering the few lines below:

Some people are born deaf, some are born blind or whatever, and this book is about congenitally defective human beings of a sort that is making this whole country and many other parts of the planet go completely haywire nowadays. These were people born without consciences, and suddenly they are taking charge of everything…. And they are waging a war that is making billionaires out of millionaires, and trillionaires out of billionaires, and they own television, and they bankroll George Bush, and not because he’s against gay marriage.¹

Today, these people are referred to as ‘sociopaths’. Psychopaths kill a few individuals; sociopaths kill entire societies. The spurious ‘war on terror’ has caused over 40,000 Afghani civilian deaths and rendered a large number of people homeless. The story of Afghanistan is what can happen when powerful nations use their military might to take control over the resources of other countries.

The occupation of Afghanistan is continuation of the nineteenth-century colonial strategy of seeking control over South Asia and its natural resources. The current Anglo-American sociopathic frenzy, however, goes far beyond mere occupation. One, it seeks to depopulate the region. Two, Afghanistan is now an extension of Western militarism in South Asia to control energy and other strategic resources. And three, Afghanistan has emerged as the world’s largest supplier of opium poppy, which is converted into hard drugs like cocaine and heroine, and this has happened when the US and NATO forces have taken full control over Afghanistan’s territory. The nineteenthcentury classical colonialism continues in the twenty-first century in a more blatant and genocidal manner. This brief chapter is a mere introduction to the nature of the power game being played out in South Asia and sums up the shape of things to come.

Afghanistan Is Being Depopulated

The occupation of Afghanistan was planned much before the so-called 9/11 events, although the media has projected that the US intervention was a reaction to the terrorist attacks. Depleted uranium (DU) weapons, a known weapon of mass destruction (WMD), were used indiscriminately in the war and continue to be used. Afghanistan was bombed not into Stone Age but into genetic annihilation. The depleted uranium bombs and bullets used by the Western occupation army have poisoned the soil, water bodies and all living things in Afghanistan. The region is now ‘uninhabitable’. Recent researches show that that there is nothing ‘depleted’ about depleted uranium (DU). It is a lethal weapon that goes on killing even after the weapon is expended.

Uranium isotope U-238 is a natural substance and all life forms carry trace amounts from ingesting food and water. Another isotope of uranium, U-235, is also a naturally occurring substance. The ratio of naturally occurring U-238 to U-235 is 137.88:1. Human body can cope with this ratio. However, the use of depleted uranium, the waste product of uranium enrichment process, in weapons upsets this ratio.²

Enriched and depleted uranium are both mutagenic materials; they attack the DNA structure and alter it. It implies that the use of depleted uranium weapons can compromise the future quality of human population—indeed all life forms. Responsible scientists had warned that DU weapons are WMD and must not be used. Yet, DU weapons were extensively used in Afghanistan, particularly in the eastern parts, including the heavily populated Kabul and Jalalabad. Studies conducted by the Uranium Medical Research Centre (UMRC) showed traces of uranium in returning Gulf War I British soldiers, which ‘indicated the presence of 30%–50% of DU mixed with natural uranium.’³

During 2002, the UMRC team conducted a series of field tests in Afghanistan. In Jalalabad, it found concentrations of 400 per cent to 2,000 per cent above normal level. At Nangarhar, the concentration was 100 to 400 times; every person donating urine sample was contaminated. Doug Westerman met the research team and this is what he reports:

The UMRC field team was shocked by the breadth of public health impacts coincident with the bombing. Without exception, at every bombsite investigated, people are ill. A significant portion of the civilian population presents symptoms consistent with internal contamination by uranium… In Afghanistan, unlike Iraq, UMRC lab results indicated high concentrations of NON-DEPLETED URANIUM, with the concentrations being much higher than in DU victims from Iraq. Afghanistan was used as a testing ground for a new generation of ‘bunker buster’ bombs containing high concentrations of other uranium alloys.⁴

The authors are presenting two extracts below from authoritative papers:

More than 500 tons of DU munitions have been dispensed in Afghanistan. Professor Yagasaki calculated that 800 tons of DU is the atomicity equivalent to 83,000 Nagasaki bombs in a paper presented at the ‘World Uranium Weapons Conference’ in Hamburg in October 2003 (5 months ago). The amount of DU used in Iraq in 2003 is equivalent to nearly 250,000 Nagasaki bombs. Dr Chris Busby and Ms Leuren Moret have calculated that 1,900 tons of DU is equivalent to 60 TBq of Alfa and Beta particulate activity.’⁵

Not only Afghanistan and South, West and Central Asian regions are contaminated, but Dr Chris Busby tracked the presence of DU in the British atmosphere, which means the Afghanistan bombings also contaminated large parts of Europe.

The highest levels of depleted uranium ever measured in the atmosphere in Britain, were transported on air currents from the Middle East and Central Asia; of special significance were those from the Tora Bora bombing in Afghanistan in 2001, and the ‘Shock.& Awe’ bombing during Gulf War II in Iraq in 2003.⁶

Thus, it can be seen that WMDs were (a) used on a South Asian country, (b) the estimated amount of WMD used is equivalent to the atomicity of 51,800 Nagasaki-sized bombs, and (c) the land, air, water and all living things are now contaminated. Given the fact that the half life of DU, i.e., the time taken for it to turn into inert substance, is 4.5 billion years, the long-term consequences of this criminal act is beyond calculation. In a personal communication with the author, Ms Moret explained that DU was blown over the Himalayas where it was snowed out or rained out. The implication is that vast agricultural plains in South Asia are now contaminated.

The effect of DU on human body depends upon proximity to the exploding weapon; people living far from the main battleground may manifest the effects after five to seven years. Dr Keith Beverstock, who was for 11 years the chief expert on radiation and health with the WHO, and also authored a still unpublished study, has charged that his report on the cancer risk to civilians in Iraq from breathing uranium contaminated dust ‘was deliberately suppressed’. Eventually, he released his report.

Afghanistan is now facing a public-health and environmental catastrophe; along with Afghanistan, people living within a 1,0000-mile radius of Kabul, or 3,140,000 square mile, are now facing almost certain extinction.

Occupation and Militarization to Control Oil

Over 75 per cent of world’s oil and gas is located on Muslim lands and to create conditions to control those resources Muslims were first demonized, Al-Qaeda was resurrected, and a wild, phoney ‘smoke-‘em-out’ chase began. Afghanistan flanks the southern and eastern part of the oil and gas producing region and offers a good operational base to transport the resource from the Caspian basin. Hence, the ‘chase’ first started in Afghanistan. With DU contamination depopulating the region, few will survive, or remain in good health, to oppose the illegal occupation.

The concentration of US air and naval forces across West Asia, and extremely heavy deployment across Afghanistan, is hard evidence of the strategic value of these resources to the Anglo-American cabal. The language being used to describe the strategic thrust, with no indication of withdrawal, further indicates that they plan to stay in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Moreover, the regional theatres of war in Chechnya and Palestine, with increasing war-drum beating against Syria and Iran, are to secure (a) the BakuCeyhan pipeline (proposed), and (b) the existing pipelines from the Black Sea. The Kashmir conflagration that has been deliberately kept alive for over six decades is part of that agenda and now extended to prevent Chinese access through the proposed road link to Pakistan’s Gwadar port in the Arabian Sea.

Professor Michel Chussodovsky, who has exposed the charade of Islamic fundamentalist jehadists out to destroy Western civilization, says,

US sponsored ‘civil wars’ have also been conducted in several other strategic oil and gas regions including Nigeria, the Sudan, Colombia, Somalia, Yemen, Angola, not to mention Chechnya and several republics of the former Soviet Union. Ongoing US sponsored ‘civil wars’, which often include the channeling of covert support to paramilitary groups, have been triggered in the Darfur region of Sudan as well as in Somalia. Darfur possesses extensive oil reserves. In Somalia, lucrative concessions have already been granted to four Anglo-American oil giants.⁷

The current US–NATO-led wars will profoundly impact future Afghanistan and South Asia. Firstly, it is planned to expropriate northern territories of Pakistan into Afghanistan, thereby preventing the Chinese plan to access the Arabian Sea through their proposed trans-Himalayan highway, which they are financing. Secondly, the Baluch and frontier aspirations fit perfectly in with the agenda: co-opted ruler south of the Afghani mayhem will ensure territorial security with more airbases of the colonialists to boot. Thirdly, the plan to truncate Pakistan into a rump is ominous because it is a precursor of further Balkanization of South Asia. Vast areas are coming under biofuel cultivation in India. Subsidies are being offered to grow Jetropha curcus for eventual export to Europe. While it is the people of Afghanistan who are at the moment bearing the brunt, this situation might spread over to the whole of South Asia. No country in the region is safe from the aggression of Anglo-American leadership.

Control over Global Supply of Opiates

Afghanistan, after the occupation by Anglo-American cabal in 2001, has emerged as the world’s largest supplier of opium.

As shown by the survey, a high level of economic dependency on opium poppy cultivation is limited to a few of the provinces which did not comply with the ban on opium poppy cultivation, processing, trafficking and abuse, issued on 17 January 2002 by President Karzai. The decree states that the continuing existence of an opium-based economy was a matter of national security and should be fought by all means. It also calls for greater international support to interdict the trade and offer alternatives to farmers. The findings reported above render this call for international support extremely important.⁸

The authors are quoting 2002 UNODC document because the Taliban, which was eventually demonized as co-conspirators with Al-Qaeda, had virtually wiped out opium farming in 2001 in association with UNODC for which the Taliban were congratulated in the UN. The success of Afghanistan’s drug eradication programme under the Taliban had been acknowledged at the October 2001 session of the UN General Assembly (which took place barely a few days after the beginning of the 2001 bombing raids). No other UNODC member country was able to implement a comparable programme:

Turning first to drug control, I had expected to concentrate my remarks on the implications of the Taliban’s ban on opium poppy cultivation in areas under their control[bu8]We now have the results of our annual ground survey of poppy cultivation in Afghanistan. This year’s production [2001] is around 185 tons. This is down from the 3300 tons last year [2000], a decrease of over 94 per cent. Compared to the record harvest of 4700 tons two years ago, the decrease is well over 97 per cent.⁹

In a press release, the UNODC says, ‘A call for more resources to counteract the growing drug problem in Afghanistan was issued today prior to an international meeting in Berlin by Antonio Maria Costa, Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).’¹⁰

‘This conference takes place at a time when the drug situation in Afghanistan risks becoming even more serious. The 2003 opium production in Afghanistan, estimated at 3,600 tons/80,000 hectares, represented a further increase above the already high 2002 figure and generated an income of one billion US dollars for farmers and US$ 1.3 billion for traffickers, equivalent to over half of its national income’, Mr Costa said.¹¹ ‘Measures to repress the traffickers, dismantle the heroin labs, and destroy the terrorists’ and the warlords’ stake in the opium economy will enable the legitimate economy and the constitutional processes to move forward.’¹²

A point worth noting is that the Taliban were driven out after the AngloAmerican invasion in 2001. Therefore, Costa’s contention that ‘the drug situation in Afghanistan risks becoming even more serious’ is questionable. The talk of ‘dismantle the heroin labs, and destroy the terrorists’ and the warlords’ stake in the opium economy will enable the legitimate economy’ is specious and obfuscation of the reality, more so when the occupation forces keep parroting their control over the Afghan territory. Also questionable is Costa’s insinuation that responsibility for ‘demand reduction’ also lies with the Afghan government.

Professor Michel Chossudovsky has exposed the UNODC–Anglo–American cabal nexus. He contends that ‘the surge in opium cultivation production coincided with the onslaught of the US-led military operation and the downfall of the Taliban regime. From October through December 2001, farmers started to replant poppy on an extensive basis. To refute subsequent allegations that Taliban was stockpiling opium, Chossudovsky says, ‘Ironically, this twisted logic, which now forms part of a new “UN consensus”, is refuted by a report of the UNODC office in Pakistan, which confirmed, at the time, that there was no evidence of stockpiling by the Taliban.’¹³

The situation in 2007 was that opium poppy was being grown over 193,000 hectares, producing 8,200 tons per annum. Now, the UNODC is turning into an even more blatant liar, branding the Taliban as anti-Islamist drug dealers, and linking Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran as key players in the global opium poppy industry.

Who Gains from the Afghan Opium Production?

The 2007 output of opium in Afghanistan was 8,200 tons. UNODC has determined the trend of ‘farm gate prices’ of Afghani opium through July 2007.

Many aid workers and Western journalists have insinuated that the Afghani farmers are making pots of money. Holly Barnes Higgins, writing in the Washington Post, says, ‘It’s simple economics: A farmer can earn about $5,400 per hectare of opium yield, almost 10 times what he would get for a hectare of wheat’¹⁴ politely alleging that farmers are inclined to produce opium and not wheat or other food crops. This sort of writings in the mainstream media creates an impression that the Afghani farmers are criminals.

The Afghan trade in opiates constitutes a large share of the worldwide annual turnover of narcotics, which was estimated by the United Nations to be of the order of US$500 billion, but the Afghan farmers get only about one to two billion dollars. ‘The great bulk of the heroin produced from Afghan opium—with some of the drug made in Afghanistan, but most in Turkey and other countries—is used by addicts in Europe.’¹⁵

Since July of 2005, the price per kilo dropped from US$ 167 to US$ 105, a steep 37 per cent fall. So, who gains from trade in opium-processed-into-narcotics? There is enough evidence that middlemen and banks are the chief beneficiaries. Middlemen from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkey, other neighbouring countries and Europe; but the banks are mainly USor Europe-based, adept in money laundering. Mike Ruppert¹⁶ establishes how Western intelligence agencies (chiefly the CIA) and banks have been running drugs, or protecting narcotics trade, for decades. The illegal money is recycled by Western banks, adding to their awesome profits, but the covert operations are actually financed by this money. Effectively, the European consumers of drugs are directly subsidizing the covert destabilizing operations of Western intelligence agencies in the Third World countries. Afghanistan is now their main operational base in Asia.

Summary

An impoverished country, with millennia-old social and economic relations with other neighbours, is now a part of the Anglo-American militarization to ensure the latter’s control over drugs and oil. The twenty-first century colonial ambition, in fact, goes further than that: It has created conditions for slow and painful mass annihilation of all Afghans through the indiscriminate use of depleted uranium weapons. The contamination has spread all over the world, including major parts of north-west India, entire Pakistan, more than half of Nepal and West Asia.

Oil drove the industrialization process; oil fueled the developed world’s economic growth and created immense wealth for some, especially those who are members of the Anglo-American ruling cabal. This cabal controls the media and natural resources in majority of the developing world. Since oil sustains their cocaine-driven economy, they just cannot afford to let go of their access to cheap oil so long as they can. In the process, poor people all over the world, tilling their lands over mountains of fabulous natural resources, are paying the price. Afghanistan is just another addition in recent times; the events in Afghanistan unravel the desperation of the ruling cabal.

It should also be remembered that this ruling cabal controls the military might of the United States of America. That gives them a lethal power. Over 70 developing countries have been pummeled into submission. The loot of their natural resources goes on.

These custodians of chaos create co-opted custodians of chaos everywhere. If some refuse to be custodians of chaos they are dealt with in ways that is symbolized by present day Afghanistan, and that engineered chaos is financed by drug money. The poor Western citizens are actually subsidizing the global agenda of chaos and control of a handful of Anglo-American ruling bloodlines.