The U.S. has
a “long history” of benefiting from drug trafficking from the Vietnam War era to
the ongoing war in Afghanistan, says a Pennsylvania-based political analyst and
writer.
“There is a
consistent pattern of the U.S.A, the Pentagon, the CIA benefiting from drug
trafficking because there’s a lot of money” in it, said Linh Dinh in a phone
interview with the U.S. Desk on Saturday.
“When the
Taliban was in charge before the U.S. invasion [of Afghanistan], opium
production was very down. Now, it’s very up. So, that’s the real scandal here”,
added Dinh.
The Pentagon oversees the U.S. military’s operations to curb the spread of Afghanistan’s drug money from a compound in Kabul called Camp Integrity, according to a recent report by The Wired’s Danger Room. The camp, the report says, houses the headquarters of the private security company formerly known as Blackwater.
The U.S.-led war
on Afghanistan began more than a decade ago and has become the longest-running
war in U.S. history. After more than a decade of occupation, Afghanistan is
seeing a substantial rise in opium poppy cultivation.
On Tuesday Nov.
20, United Nations officials warned against an “alarming” trend in the increase
of poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, saying it rose 18 percent between 2011 and
2012.
ISH/HJ