Scotland, Afghanistan and heroin

When people were protesting against the war in Iraq, “No war for oil!” was one of the main slogans around the world. Of course it’s easy to see that at a simple level the reason why Britain and America invaded Iraq was to do with oil.

But things are rarely simple and straight forward when it comes to the operation of big, nuclear armed empires trying to control the world. For example, as much as the war in Iraq was about American control and access to Iraq’s oil fields, it was also about making sure that when that oil was bought and sold on the world market it was done in dollars, not euros.

The same is true of the long, and escalating, war in Afghanistan. On one level the reason British and American soldiers are killing and dying there is clearly to do with oil pipelines, and keeping strategic control over Asia in a battle for world domination. These big reasons why the war grinds on are about to be explained in an upcoming SSY pamphlet looking a bit deeper into why we should campaign for an immediate withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.

But in any big war operation like this, there are secondary reasons why the governments of NATO are willing to commit lives and huge amounts of money. Something that’s been overlooked as a reason motivating the war in Afghanistan is the global importance of the heroin economy.

Estimates put the value of the global heroin trade at more than $64.82 billion per year. Today, over 90% of that product originates in Afghanistan. Only a small proportion of these massive profits can be held in cash or recycled through unofficial banks. The vast majority has to be laundered through the global financial system. In other words, the drug trade contributes billions of dollars a year to the revenues of major global banks.

Poppies being grown for heroin production in Afghanistan

Just because something is illegal doesn’t mean that when it’s traded for huge profits it isn’t a vital part of the world economy. The story of the growth of the heroin trade since the 60′s is one that’s inextricably linked with the history of US imperialism and its wars around the world. There’s a long and well documented history of the involvement of US government agencies like the CIA in the drug trade. During the US wars in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, American support was given to anti-communist rebels that used heroin production to fund their operations with the support and approval of the CIA. The areas where the drugs were produced were known as ‘The Golden Triangle.’

Later persistent allegations surfaced that in the 1980s the CIA collaborated in assisting the Contra rebels (who were waging war against the left wing government in Nicaragua) in selling crack cocaine into the US. This was uncovered by investigative journalist Gary Webb. The point of the operation was to generate a stream of profits through the drug trade that provided the money to sustain the Contras’ war. If the CIA had asked the US Congress for this funding they would have had to justify its use, but crack money provided funds whose use they weren’t answerable for.

With black communities across the US flooded with crack cocaine, many affected by the resulting wave of social disruption blamed the CIA and US foreign policy. By 1996 CIA Director John Deutch was forced to appear at a public meeting in Watts, Los Angeles to answer to the allegations. Despite his denials of CIA involvement in the drug trade, he was confronted by a former LAPD Narcotics Officer turned independent investigator, Mike Ruppert, who told the meeting he had direct evidence of CIA involvement in trafficking crack.

The point of all this background history is to show that the CIA and other US government and military agencies have long had involvement in the highly profitable global drug trade. The profits from this trade have helped to provide funding for secret military operations not subject to any kind of democratic scrutiny.

Beginning in 1978 the CIA embarked on its biggest operation ever, which was to fund and arm warlords and Islamic fundamentalists to make war against the Soviet-backed left wing government of Afghanistan. They worked hand-in-glove with the Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) agency This war dragged on throughout the 80s, draining lives and resources from the USSR, and contributing greatly to its final collapse. The mujahideen rebels, equipped by American arms and money, were eventually able to drive the Soviet armies out, and then depose the government.

In the chaos of the war and its aftermath Afghanistan became the world’s leading supplier of heroin. As you might expect, very little of the profits are made by the actual farmers. The money is made by government officials, police, warlords and power brokers. Indeed, the western-backed President Hamid Karzai’s own family have been implicated in the drug trade.

Of course, when the mainstream media reports on the Afghan heroin trade, they usually do so to imply that it provides funding to the Taliban and al Qaeda. However, the truth is that the vast majority of the profit goes to NATO allies, people who our forces maintain in power. Many of these same forces work with figures in the Pakistani military and intelligence establishment, providing a major source of income to Pakistani state (another US ally.)

In fact, in 2000, before the American invasion and while they were still in power, the Taliban actually banned the growing of poppies needed to produce heroin. The Afghan heroin trade temporarily collapsed in value, cutting off a massive source of revenue for the Pakistani state. And ultimately, the impact was felt on the profits of western banks through which the money would have been laundered.

When the US and its allies invaded in 2001, revival of the heroin trade proved to be one of the main ways to finance the operations of the Northern Alliance, the western backed gang of brutal warlords now in power in many parts of Afghanistan. Some of the warlords have become millionaires as a result.

In addition, there is a significant profit being made by someone in the marketing of the chemical precursors needed to manufacture heroin in Afghanistan. Acetic anhydride, a chemical needed as part of the process, is regularly intercepted being smuggled into Afghanistan. The trade in this chemical is thought to be worth $45 million. A portion of that money makes its way back to western chemical corporations as profits.

There are an estimated 16 million opiate users worldwide, and the main market is in Europe, where the annual profits are estimated to be around $20 billion. One of the main ways that peace could perhaps be achieved in Afghanistan would be to do something to curb the demand for illegally produced heroin in Europe.

In Scotland, the SSP and SSY has campaigned for years in favour of a system of clean, pharmaceutical heroin being prescribed to addicts via the NHS. We’ve been villified, even effectively being called drug dealers by the Daily Record. But the fact remains that heroin on prescription is a safer way to help people with an addiction than the current system of blanket prescribing methadone. In a pilot scheme in the English town of Widnes where this was tried the effect was a drop to virtually zero levels of acquisitive crime by drug users, as well as new infection rates for HIV.

Pharmaceutical heroin

The urgency of removing the need for Scotland’s 50,000+ heroin users to buy from the illegal market was illustrated graphically last year. At least 9 people were killed after using heroin that was contaminated with anthrax.

But at least part of the reason that the pilot scheme in Widnes was shut down was that it threatened the profits of pharmaceutical companies manufacturing methadone. And at least part of the reason that NATO forces remain entangled in the Afghan war is that our allies rely on the heroin trade, which in turn produces a tidy profit for western banks. In the wake of the economic collapse of 2008, banks are now less keen than ever to ask too many questions about where their money is coming from. As UN drug official Antonio Mario Costa puts it:

“Interbank loans were funded by money that originated from drug trade and other illegal activities, and there were signs that some banks were rescued in that way… at a time of major bank failures, money doesn’t smell, bankers seem to believe.”

What all this shows is that the fight against the war in Afghanistan is inextricably linked to the fight to change society here. Their problems are largely a result of our governments’ policies. A socialist drug policy in Scotland would go a long way to ending the misery caused by illegal heroin in Scottish communities. But it would also go a long way to pulling the fuel from the fire of the war in Afghanistan, giving the Afghan people a chance at last to have peace and determine their own future.