Peter Dale Scott — AMERICA’S AFGHANISTAN — US National Security and a Heroin-Ravaged State

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Peter Dale Scott — AMERICA’S AFGHANISTAN
– US National Security and a Heroin-Ravaged State
The US State Department calls Afghanistan a failed state that justifies US intervention, rather than acknowledging that US intervention has caused that so-called failure. And among all the triggers to that failure from US support of the Mujahedin and Al Quaeda to the war lords one element is not recognized in it’s real importance: the role of the trade in opium. Peter Dale Scott, author of “Drugs Oil, and War” and “Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America” is one of the most respected researchers on the use of drugs in the strategies of the CIA and in US foreign policy. He says that the unprecedented increase in Afghani opium production in the last 5 years could never have happened without outside support. While Afghanistan is being ravaged by heroin and many farmers are forced to grow for very little profit the real gains of drug production are made by large political players and on the international market. Even though Afghanistan now supplies over 90% of the world’s heroin, the Afghan portion of the global heroin network, in dollar terms, is financially minute compared to what is earned elsewhere. According to the UN, the ultimate value in world markets in 2007 of Afghanistan’s $4 billion opium crop was about $110 billion. This talk by Professor Scott is putting names and faces on the beneficiaries of that drug trade. Peter Dale Scott was recorded in the mountains of Northern California at a small gathering of friends and neighbors. A TUC Radio Production Production

This entry was posted on Monday, June 1st, 2009 at 9:11 am and is filed under Anti-War, Anti-War/Progressive Teachin, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.