Cocaine Importing Agency

News from Afghanistan

Opium cultivation has surged since the ouster of the Taliban in late 2001. The former regime enforced an effective ban on poppy growing by threatening to jail farmers — virtually eradicating the crop in 2000. But Afghan and Western counternarcotics officials say Taliban-led militants are now implicated in the drug trade, encouraging poppy cultivation and using the proceeds to help fund their insurgency."(That) kind of revenue from that kind of crop aids and abets the enemy," Chief Master Sgt. Curtis L. Brownhill, a senior adviser to the head of the U.S. Central Command, during a recent visit to Afghanistan. "They count on having that sort of resource and money."...."Now what they have is a narco-economy. If they do not get corruption sorted they can slip into being a narco-state," the U.S. official warned.

This is like McDonalds warning a 30st trucker that if he does not stop eating quarter pounders every day, he will become a fat bastard. The Taliban who went to great pains to eradicate poppy cultivation are now being accused of doing just the opposite. Despite 'intensive anti-drugs efforts' apparent "virtually all cultivated land in Helmand — including government-owned land — has been planted with opium poppies." Call me silly, but doesn't that suggest that it is people in the government who are responsible? I know just because they have a history of being warlords and running drugs in the past doesn't mean we should judge them. After all they are now responsible members of the democratic community who do their utmost for womens rights and such like. Not that the CIA would ever have anything to do with all of this either, despite minor prior slip-ups in Vietnam, Laos, Burma and a few other places where anti-communist heroes just happened to be drug-runners too.

CIA Dope Calypso 
by Allen Ginsberg, 1972

In nineteen hundred forty-nine
China was won by Mao Tse-tung
Chiang Kai Shek's army ran away
They were waiting there in Thailand yesterday

Supported by the CIA
Pushing junk down Thailand way

First they stole from the Meo Tribes
Up in the hills they started taking bribes
Then they sent their soldiers up to Shan
Collecting opium to send to The Man

Pushing junk in Bangkok yesterday
Supported by the CIA

Brought their jam on mule trains down
To Chiang Mai that's a railroad town
Sold it next to the police chief's brain
He took it to town on the choochoo train
Trafficking dope to Bangkok all day
Supported by the CIA
...............

Touby Lyfong he worked for the French
A big fat man liked to dine & wench
Prince of the Meos he grew black mud
Till opium flowed through the land like a flood

Communists came and chased the French away
So Touby took a job with the CIA

and so on