North Korea Is a Large Opium Producer Just Like Afghanistan – But That’s None of Your Business

[dufus]

North Korea Is a Large Opium Producer Just Like Afghanistan – But That’s None of Your Business

By

Liam S. Whittaker

-

Apr 20, 2017

686

 

 

 

Prior to the U.S. invasion and occupation that sent production and cultivation skyrocketing  crop in Afghanistan.35-fold in just the first 13 years, the Taliban had successfully decimated the opium poppy

Nearly 16 years later, Afghanistan’s lucrative drug trafficking business is still roaring along unhindered, and — with U.S. troops literally guarding the occupied nation’s 90-percent share of the world’s opium supply — potential competitors rightly seemed scarce.

That is, until North Korea just said ‘no’ to the Drug War.

 

“In its early stage, the Kim Jong-un regime declared a war against drugs, getting rid of poppy fields,” Kang Cheol-hwan, president of the defector organization, North Korea Strategy Center, told Yonhap News Agency last month. “But now they are cultivating them again.”

North Korea’s opium poppies remained at least somewhat secreted from its citizens under the rule of Kim Jong-il.

In an August 2011 interview with NPR, Ma Young Ae — a defector and former North Korean spy who lives in Virginia — explained she “worked for Kim Jong Il’s internal police force. Her job was was to track down drug smugglers.

That sounds like pretty normal law enforcement, except for one difference. She was supposed to stop small-time Korean drug dealers in order to protect the biggest drug dealer in the country: the North Korean government.

“Ma told us the North Korean government produced opium on a large scale. But it hid its poppy fields from most of the population. Ma only saw the fields because she was an insider.

“After harvesting the fields, the government would put its empty factories to use. The government would turn on its production lines at night and process opium, Ma says.

Then they would pack the product in plastic cubes the size of dictionaries and smuggle it out of the country through China.”

Kim Jong-il’s son and successor instead chose to fight the war on drugs — until the Chinese Commerce Ministry suspended imports of coal from February through the end of the year, in response to one of Pyongyang’s contentious ballistic missiles tests.

Faced with the rapid loss of hard currency and an uphill battle to fund the regime’s activities — coal comprised an estimated 40 percent of North Korea’s exports to China — Kim Jong-un appears to have cozied to the wallet-stuffing possibilities the prized poppy provides.

Noting the war on drugs had already failed, Kang added, “The North is cultivating poppy fields again for drug smuggling as a way to secure funds to manage its regime.”

Funding an entire government’s operations from the cultivation and production of opium should be a piece of cake — should illegal markets fail, America has an insidious obsession with opioids.

Tens of thousands each year die of overdoses from heroin, opioids, and/or their synthetics in the United States, alone — in large part, courtesy of the pharmaceutical industry’s reckless devotion to painkillers.

Vox reported March 29 the opioid “epidemic has by and large been caused by the rise in opioid overdose deaths. First, opioid painkiller overdoses began to rise, as doctors began to fill out a record number of prescriptions for the drugs in an attempt to treat patients’ pain conditions.

Then, people hooked on painkillers began to move over to heroin as they or their sources of drugs lost their prescriptions. And recently, more people have begun moving to fentanyl, an opioid that’s even more potent and cheaper than heroin. The result is a deadly epidemic that so far shows no signs of slowing down.”

And how could it slow down?

Opioids doled out like candy by doctors and hospitals to those suffering but unaware of the addiction pitfalls inherent in rising tolerance, short-term prescriptions, and — in particular — the availability of potent substances like heroin and fentanyl on the black market.

This isn’t by far purely an issue to be blamed on illegal trade in drugs. Media Roots’ Abby Martin elaborated on the perniciousness of the opioid crisis in 2014, stating,

“In today’s globalized world of rule-for-profit, one can’t discount the role that multinational corporations play in US foreign policy decisions either.

Not only have oil companies and private military contractors made a killing off the occupation, big pharmaceutical companies, which collectively lobby over 250 million dollars annually to Congress, need opium latex to manufacture drugs for this pill happy nation.

As far as the political elite funneling the tainted funds, the recent HSBC bank scandal exposed how trillions of dollars in black market sales are brazenly being laundered offshore.”

For the welcome relief opioid painkillers offer those who suffer severe discomfort, the medications’ highly-addictive nature leaves doctors reluctant to write strong prescriptions.

However, if tolerance builds, and medical personnel refuse to increase dosage accordingly, those still facing unbearable pain often shop black markets — where the purity and safety of substances cannot be verified — to supplement their supplies.

It must be duly noted, America’s opioid epidemic mushroomed only after U.S. troops invaded Afghanistan.

“Within six months of the U.S. invasion,” wrote Matthieu Aikins for the December 4, 2014, Rolling Stone, “the warlords we backed were running the opium trade, and the spring of 2002 saw a bumper harvest of 3,400 tons.”

Just prior to boots and bombs hitting the ground, opium production in Afghanistan fell to an impressive low of 185 pounds — all-too ironically, thanks to Taliban efforts to eradicate the entire supply of opium poppies.

Mint Press News’ Mnar Muhawesh wrote last year, “The War in Afghanistan saw the country’s practically dead opium industry expanded dramatically. By 2014, Afghanistan was producing twice as much opium as it did in 2000. By 2015, Afghanistan was the source of 90 percent of the world’s opium poppy.”

Claiming terrorism as the impetus for invading Afghanistan would be at least as absurd as the Drug Enforcement Agency claiming the global War on Drugs has been a success.

Taliban forces have returned in strength to the nation whose opium poppies are guarded by U.S. troops — who are putatively present to fight in the ongoing War on Terror.

After a moment deeply pondering the last point, it’s imperative to address current events — specifically, U.S. military vessels already present in the South and East China Seas, amid dangerously high tensions with North Korea.

North Korea — who announced weeks ago its debilitated economy would seek relief from, yes, the cultivation and production of opium poppies.

Perpetually bellicose Pyongyang is no stranger to hyperbole in military prowess — so much so, threats of direct nuclear strikes by North Korea against the United States are typically downplayed by Washington, if not dismissed with a snide grin.

Pyongyang’s testing of ballistic and other missiles has been deemed a threat to the national security of South Korea, where a U.S. missile defense system pointed North has further heightened hostilities on the peninsula and in the region.

Of one such missile launch Sunday, Defense Secretary James Mattis admonished,

“The leader of North Korea again recklessly tried to provoke something by launching a missile.”

Kim In Ryong, North Korea’s Deputy Ambassador to the United Nations, warned on Monday the U.S. has “created a dangerous situation in which a thermonuclear war may break out at any minute” — adding, Pyongyang “is ready to react to any mode of war desired by the U.S.”

Whether that war includes plans for the U.S. usurpation of North Korea’s literal cash crop of opium poppies will undoubtedly be determined soon.

http://csglobe.com/north-korea-opium-afghanistan/

[mikie]

Maybe USA should send a fleet of crop dusters to defoliate their opium fields  

[steven36]

23 minutes ago, mikie said:

Maybe USA should send a fleet of crop dusters to defoliate their opium fields  

LOL, like they could get in, without being shoot down  by the NK government. Realty  check my friend  . I don't think they used crop dusters since Vietnam when they use too spray stuff on the cannabis over there to make it not smokeble  and that still did not stop the solders  from bringing in Slunk weed seeds after the war the USA has its own strain of weed from Vietnam.  As far as drug fields in recent years in Panama and  Afghanistan. Foot solders  burn them .  Very little is ever told in the news about it but  some of my friends who are vets who were in these places told me how it  was done.

[dufus]

On 24/04/2017 at 4:06 PM, mikie said:

Maybe USA should send a fleet of crop dusters to defoliate their opium fields  

upside down crop pickers

 

Afghan Opium Production Increases 35-Fold Since U.S. Invasion

http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/02/10/afghan-opium-production-increases-35-fold-since-u-s-invasion/

'Eradication has been close to zero' in the world's biggest producer of heroin

http://www.businessinsider.de/opium-and-heroin-production-in-afghanistan-has-increased-2016-10?r=US&IR=T

Rumors Persist That The CIA Helps Export Opium From Afghanistan

http://www.mintpressnews.com/rumors-persist-that-the-cia-helps-export-opium-from-afghanistan/209687/

[dufus]

FBI Director Comey was board member of HSBC – Clinton Foundation & Drug Cartel ‘bank of choice’

http://21stcenturywire.com/2016/07/13/fbi-director-comey-board-member-of-clinton-foundation-connected-bank-hsbc/

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/hsbc-james-brien-comey-jr-money-laundering-429453

[dufus]

EXPLOSIVE NEW HISTORY CHANNEL SERIES FINALLY EXPOSES CIA DRUG TRAFFICKING CONSPIRACY

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Main World Explosive new History Channel series finally exposes CIA drug trafficking conspiracy

1. 

   04.26 / 22:56sott.net

    

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   Richard Nixon, in his effort to silence black people and antiwar activists, brought the War on Drugs into full force in 1973. He then signed Reorganization Plan No. 2, which established the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Over the course of five decades, this senseless war has waged on. At a cost of over $1 trillion — ruining and ending countless lives in the process — America's drug war has created a drug problem that is worse now than ever before. Comment: See: Nixon official: T…

Richard Nixon, in his effort to silence black people and antiwar activists, brought the War on Drugs into full force in 1973. He then signed Reorganization Plan No. 2, which established the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Over the course of five decades, this senseless war has waged on. At a cost of over $1 trillion — ruining and ending countless lives in the process — America's drug war has created a drug problem that is worse now than ever before. This is no coincidence. For years, those of us who've been paying attention have seen who profits from this inhumane war — the police state and cartels. This horrendously corrupt and violent drug war has gotten so bad, that it is getting pushed into the mainstream. In an extremely rare move, A&E Networks, a subsidiary of ABC and the Walt Disney Company, will be addressing the government's role in the drug war in a four-part documentary series on the History Channel, titled, "America's War on Drugs." In this documentary, History channel promises to delve into items that, up until recently, were considered 'conspiracy theory.' CIA drug dealing is one of those such items. According to the description on A&E:

"America's War of Drugs" is an immersive trip through the last five decades, uncovering how the CIA, obsessed with keeping America safe in the fight against communism, allied itself with the mafia and foreign drug traffickers. In exchange for support against foreign enemies, the groups were allowed to grow their drug trade in the United States.

Promising to be one of the most explosive television series in recent history, the show intends to expose the CIA's connection to the crack epidemic.

Night one of "America's War on Drugs" divulges covert Cold War operations that empowered a generation of drug traffickers and reveals the peculiar details of secret CIA LSD experiments which helped fuel the counter-culture movement, leading to President Nixon's crackdown and declaration of a war on drugs. The documentary series then delves into the rise of the cocaine cowboys, a secret island "cocaine base," the CIA's connection to the crack epidemic, the history of the cartels and their murderous tactics, the era of "Just Say No," the negative effect of NAFTA, and the unlikely career of an almost famous Midwest meth queen.

If the CIA trafficking cocaine into the United States sounds like some tin foil conspiracy theory, think again. Their role in the drug trade was exposed in 1996 in a critical investigative series "Dark Alliance" by Gary Webb for the San Jose Mercury News. The investigation, headed up by Webb revealed ties between the CIA, Nicaraguan contras and the crack cocaine trade ravaging African-American communities. The investigation provoked massive protests and congressional hearings, as well as overt backlash from the mainstream media to discredit Webb's reporting. However, decades later, officials would come forward to back Webb's original investigation up. Then-senator John Kerry even released a detailed report claiming that not only was there "considerable evidence" linking the Contra effort to trafficking of drugs and weapons — but that the U.S. government knew about it. Also, as the Free Thought Project previously reported, in a new book, Juan Pablo Escobar Henao, son of notorious Medellín cartel drug kingpin, Pablo Escobar, explains how his father "worked for the CIA." In the book, "Pablo Escobar In Fraganti," Escobar, who lives under the pseudonym, Juan Sebastián Marroquín, explains his "father worked for the CIA selling cocaine to finance the fight against Communism in Central America."Going even further down the rabbit hole, the History Channel will address how US involvement in Afghanistan turned the country into a virtual heroin factory and how the drug war empowers cartels. The final chapter of the series examines how the attacks on September 11th intertwined the War on Drugs and the War on Terror, transforming Afghanistan into a narco-state teeming with corruption. It also explores how American intervention in Mexico helped give rise to El Chapo and the Super Cartels, bringing unprecedented levels of violence and sending even more drugs across America's borders. The reason why the drug war actually creates a drug and violence problem is simple. And those who profit most from the drug war — drug war enforcers and cartels — all know it. When the government makes certain substances illegal, it does not remove the demand. Instead, the state creates crime by pushing the sale and control of these substances into the illegal black markets. All the while, demand remain constant. We can look at the prohibition of alcohol and the subsequent mafia crime wave that ensued as a result as an example. The year 1930, at the peak of prohibition, happened to be the deadliest year for police i…

http://myinforms.com/en-us/a/319423108-explosive-new-history-channel-series-finally-exposes-cia-drug-trafficking-conspiracy/

[dufus]

GOP Lawmaker: U.S. Won’t Spray Opium in Afghanistan Because Crops ‘Might Be Too Close to a Mosque’

 

by EDWIN MORA27 Apr 20172

 

 

WASHINGTON D.C. — The United States had the ability to use aerial spraying to destroy the opium crops in Afghanistan used by the Taliban to fund their terrorist activities after 9/11 but refused to do so out of concern that the plants “might be too close to a mosque,” declared Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) during a congressional hearing.

Rep. Rohrabacher said that U.S. government has been able to aerial spray and eradicate the opium crops in Afghanistan used to make the deadly heroin drug for at least 20 years but has declined to employ that capability.

During an April 27 hearing on Afghanistan held by the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Terrorism, the Republican congressman said in reference to the lucrative opium business:

Let me note for the record, Mr. Chairman, we have had that [spraying] capability for at least 20 years and have not touch it, have not done it. We didn’t do it after 9/11. We had that capability, and we didn’t do it. After 9/11 there were store houses of opium where the Taliban had stored billions of dollars of opium and heroin in special locations in Afghanistan. And I will just go on the record for the first time on this — I notified our government at the very highest level exactly where those were, and they needed to be bombed because the Taliban needed to be denied that money and our government never did that. Our government never did it. They always, The excuse was always “Oh we think they might be too close to a mosque.”

Despite the estimated $8.5 billion in American taxpayer funds that the United States has already invested on anti-narcotics measures in Afghanistan since the war started in October 2001, the country remains the world’s top producer of opium and its heroin derivative.

According to the U.S. military, the Taliban, considered the strongest terrorist group in Afghanistan, generates as much as 60 percent of its funding from the illicit opium trade.

Currently, the Taliban controls more territory than during any time since the group was removed from power by the U.S. military in late 2001.

Rep. Rohrabacher noted:

So the Taliban gets a fair amount of money [from the opium trade] and of course, the Afghan government who we put into place — corrupt officials in that group including the family of [former Afghan president] Mr. [Hamid] Karzai, maybe. We’re talking about billions of dollars of wealth. Well, with billions of dollars going like that, coming out like that, I can imagine that would buy a lot of AK-47 bullets, and people wonder where people get the money.

Are any of you aware that we now have the ability to spray an area and within a short period of time, in a way that will not hurt other crops, that would eliminate the poppy production in Afghanistan and basically would not be permitted to grow in that area again for 10 years?

Using the latest United Nations data available, Breitbart News has determined that estimated opium production and the cultivation area in Afghanistan have skyrocketed more than 25-fold over the course of the ongoing war in the country, to 4,800 metric tons and 201,000 hectares (ha), respectively.

In 2016, the latest year for which data is available, the Afghan territory under cultivation was equivalent to an area more than 11 times the size of Washington, D.C.

Some experts, like Ioannis Koskinas from the New America think-tank, suggest the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) branch in Afghanistan may be involved in the opium trade.

Nevertheless, Dr. Vanda Felbab-Brown from the Brookings Institution wrote in her written testimony prepared for the House panel hearing, “The Taliban has also sponsored opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan and the jobs and income it provides for ordinary Afghans, thus generating political capital.”

“IS [Islamic State] in Afghanistan, on the other hand, has prohibited opium poppy cultivation both on grounds of ideological purity the strategic goal of ensuring that the only employment available to local men is as IS foot soldiers,” she also wrote

Asked by Rep. Rohrabacher if Islamic extremist groups in Afghanistan were using opium to fund their activities, Dr. Felbab-Brown responded that other than the Taliban, “There is no evidence that the money has been going to other terrorist groups.”

However, Dr. Seth Jones of the RAND Corporation who also testified interrupted her, saying, “But the Taliban, which does have relations with other groups, the Taliban does get a fair amount of money.”

The U.S. military has said the Afghanistan-Pakistan region is home to the largest concentration of jihadist groups in the world.

http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2017/04/27/gop-lawmaker-u-s-refuses-to-spray-opium-in-afghanistan-because-crops-might-be-too-close-to-a-mosque/

On 24/04/2017 at 4:06 PM, mikie said:

Maybe USA should send a fleet of crop dusters to defoliate their opium fields