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Herstory Begins Now posted:from your quote Opium production was indeed trivial as poo poo there relatively speaking, and it's hilarious you're still overlooking that fact and the fact that the CIA was already a global drug runner in this market and all the others. Once again, 1993 NYTimes https://www.nytimes.com/1993/12/03/opinion/IHT-the-cia-drug-connectionis-as-old-as-the-agency.html quote:Nowhere, however, was the CIA more closely tied to drug traffic than it was in Pakistan during the Afghan War. As its principal conduit for arms and money to the Afghan guerrillas, the agency chose the Pakistan military's Inter-Services Intelligence Bureau. The ISI in turn steered the CIA's support toward Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, an Islamic fundamentalist. Mr. Hekmatyar received almost half of the agency's financial support during the war, and his fighters were valiant and effective. But many of his commanders were also major heroin traffickers. Poppies grown in Afghanistan, before it became a cash crop to fund anti-Soviet activities, was a small product grown there for mostly medicinal, seasoning, and some recreational benefits. The impetus to turn it into a narcostate helped out by Pakistan was intentional. Everyone in those meetings on who to fund and how to fund them in that area used opium in their calculations. Afghanistan went from minor bit player in the drug market to world player in less than half a decade. They don't do that without plenty of help. Rust Martialis posted:loud screeching https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2003/4/24/war-with-drugs quote:According to Alfred McCoy, the author of “Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in Global Drug Trade?”, the CIA paid at least $3 billion dollars to the leaders of the Mujahedin against the Soviet Union. This included the Taliban which was a by-product and a beneficiary of the CIA-backed plan. There's a difference between a crop and a cash crop. Prior to CIA"s meddling, we're talking minor regional drugs. After CIA involvement, world mover and player. The fact that the Taliban went on to become independent of the CIA is not the point. This happened all the time in the CIA's drug world because for some curious reason they liked aligning themselves with the filth of the earth. Follow the money. Afghanistan did not need to turn out the way it did. It doesn't NEED opium as a cash crop, but the USA was more interested in fostering the conditions for the country to become wholly dependent on it. And that was planned, as it was in Laos before.
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Aug 19, 2021 13:42
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Nothing in anything you posted says anything that the CIA gave the least crap about the opium trade. I wrote a nice post with quotes from Al McCoy, but it's really restating the fact Nix is making unsupported allegations and refuses to defend his claims, so gently caress it, it's already been said, and if he won't actually defend his claims why waste time on it. Rust Martialis fucked around with this message at 14:32 on Aug 19, 2021 |
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Aug 19, 2021 14:27
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The most incredulous idea is that the same cia that didn’t foresee Afghanistan falling in a week is also the same cia that masterminded this huge opium smuggling ring.
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Aug 19, 2021 14:32
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freeasinbeer posted:The most incredulous idea is that the same cia that didn’t foresee Afghanistan falling in a week is also the same cia that masterminded this huge opium smuggling ring. Maybe the CIA varsity squad does the opium, and the JV team does the foreign power forecasting?
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Aug 19, 2021 14:45
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It's that super niche version of anti-Western Imperialism that states that the only person on the planet who has agency is the Director of the CIA, that person has an enormous heroin habit, and they are bad at their job.
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Aug 19, 2021 14:54
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People were talking about the Taliban raiding the airport and killing US soldiers, but apparently there's an official agreement between the US and the Taliban that the US will control the Kabul airport until 31 August, and I guess the Taliban will just use Kandahar airport until then: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-live-jen-psaki-national-security-adviser-jake-sullivan-give-news-briefing quote:U.S. commanders at the airport are in direct communication with Taliban commanders outside the airport to avoid security incidents. He indicated this communication was in line with an arrangement made on Sunday by the head of U.S. Central Command, Gen. Frank McKenzie, when he met with Taliban leaders in Qatar and won agreement to “deconflict” forces and allow a safe U.S. evacuation. I guess that means foreign citizens have time to get out just fine. God only knows for the tens of thousands of Afghanis who are potentially at severe risk from Taliban reprisals, I guess it depends if they can keep up the current pace of evacuations or if it starts to peter out quickly once people with foreign passports and Afghanis with Afghan passports and already-approved foreign visas have left. Also apparently that idiot British guy who went to Kabul as a tourist on 13 August got out yesterday just fine, https://www.euronews.com/travel/2021/08/17/the-22-year-old-british-student-who-flew-to-kabul-has-been-evacuated-from-afghanistan-to-d Saladman fucked around with this message at 15:08 on Aug 19, 2021 |
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Aug 19, 2021 15:06
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Found a helpful link for some of the more skeptical posters about the cia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_CIA_drug_trafficking (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Aug 19, 2021 16:22
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It's fun to think that this just has heroin written everywhere on it. https://twitter.com/theronalisa/status/1427672110210682881
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Aug 19, 2021 17:09
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holy poo poo america lost TWO THOUSAND armoured Vehicles to the taliban:- https://twitter.com/Natsecjeff/status/1428386996473507842?s=20 thats a fuckload of armour
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Aug 19, 2021 17:11
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Most are hand me down humvees the Americans got rid of because they were death traps.
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Aug 19, 2021 17:15
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I'm morbidly curious if there are any Taliban pilots who have the faintest idea what to do with the aircraft they've acquired.
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Aug 19, 2021 17:24
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steinrokkan posted:Most are hand me down humvees the Americans got rid of because they were death traps. I'm sure the taliban can come up with creative uses for Humvees that are close to their expiration date:- https://twitter.com/HKaaman/status/1242139334473547777?s=20
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Aug 19, 2021 17:25
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Terminal autist posted:Found a helpful link for some of the more skeptical posters about the cia. Apparently someone craftily deleted the section on Afghanistan from your link.
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Aug 19, 2021 17:31
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Rust Martialis posted:Apparently someone craftily deleted the section on Afghanistan from your link. Well, here's an article about how opium and heroin production in the area surged under the eye of the CIA , with 60% of the final product making it to U.S. markets... somehow. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jan/09/how-the-heroin-trade-explains-the-us-uk-failure-in-afghanistan Considering the well documented facts that the CIA was involved in increased cocaine production in Columbia in the same time frame. This includeded helping to dump it into US markets in the form of cheap crack. This illegal drug trade is a known way it funded it's operations. It is now left as an exercise to the reader to tie these extremely close dots together.
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Aug 19, 2021 18:13
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freeasinbeer posted:The most incredulous idea is that the same cia that didn’t foresee Afghanistan falling in a week is also the same cia that masterminded this huge opium smuggling ring. What capitalist nonsense is this that you need to be smart to get an industry off the ground by pouring shitloads of money and resources into it? Captains of industry are shortsighted dumbasses too.
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Aug 19, 2021 18:20
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Greatbacon posted:Well, here's an article about how opium and heroin production in the area surged under the eye of the CIA , with 60% of the final product making it to U.S. markets... somehow. You think all cia operations were funded with crack and smack?
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Aug 19, 2021 18:30
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Rust Martialis posted:Nothing in anything you posted says anything that the CIA gave the least crap about the opium trade. Afghanistan was a country that grew a small crop until it was the site of a proxy war that turned it into the world's largest supplier of opium. The traditional economy was intentionally left in shambles forcing reliance on the drug trade as the only viable way to make money. This did not happen organically, it happened *exclusively* because the CIA decided to fight a proxy war with the Soviets through the medium of warlords using a proxy intelligence agency with ties to opium distribution. Absolutely *nothing* like this happens in Afghanistan without the CIA. The global opium supplier status of Afghanistan was caused *directly* and *exclusively* by CIA interference. In the counterfactual world where there is no CIA proxy war, the Soviets still might have been driven out by popular revolt, but there is no international force propping up the warlords and providing them the connections to become international drug traffickers. Sadly, the CIA did not leave behind a giant cartoon ledger with a written confession and presentation slide deck for those unable to make very simple and obvious connections between events. Also no one is suggesting the CIA time traveled and altered the environment of Afghanistan to be suitable for poppy cultivation, then carefully seeded poppy and opium consumption into the local customs. However its not a stretch to recognize that opium production went from a cottage industry to global supplier in just a few years that happened to coincide with CIA involvement, or that the CIA has a long history of building drug trafficking connections as solutions for funding their favored warlords How difficult is it to understand the mechanism of exploitation here? The CIA wants to fight the Soviets and funnels weapons and money into the country. CIA money alone isn't enough to win and the conflict is destroying agriculture, with the country becoming increasingly reliant on Soviet food imports. In order to keep fueling their guerilla war the warlords turn to opium as a cash crop, and conveniently the CIA and ISI are able to hook them up with enough buyers to move a significant increase in global production. After the war the economy is destroyed and the Soviet food imports stop, so now they *have* to keep growing opium. Do you really think thats just a natural and organic progression that was always fated to happen? freeasinbeer posted:The most incredulous idea is that the same cia that didn’t foresee Afghanistan falling in a week is also the same cia that masterminded this huge opium smuggling ring. Intelligence Warned of Afghan Military Collapse, Despite Biden’s Assurances Intelligence Agencies Did Not Predict Imminence of Afghan Collapse, Officials Say Its a real mystery Maybe Biden was just a giant pudding brain incapable of understanding reports? Or maybe the quality of CIA agent has really gone down since they got one of their own into the presidency, and then his son got in eight years later?
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Aug 19, 2021 18:46
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Imperial decline is a childish fantasy I say, as we get run out of a country in total humiliation by the same people we conquered 20 years ago
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Aug 19, 2021 18:47
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steinrokkan posted:Most are hand me down humvees the Americans got rid of because they were death traps. Still probably an upgrade over the old Land Cruiser. Though good luck maintaining, and fueling, those American vehicles.
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Aug 19, 2021 18:52
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Count Roland posted:Still probably an upgrade over the old Land Cruiser. They will figure out a number that it makes sense to keep running and they will use the rest as spare parts for a long time. They don't need all of them. And if China gets in closer with them, they will get a supply of either reverse engineered parts.
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Aug 19, 2021 18:57
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Nix Panicus posted:Intelligence Warned of Afghan Military Collapse, Despite Biden’s Assurances You're so invested in believing the CIA are evil masterminds that you're buying CIA propaganda that actually they knew this was going to happen all along. It's pretty blatant rear end covering and throwing everyone else under the bus.
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Aug 19, 2021 19:03
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Sinteres posted:You're so invested in believing the CIA are evil masterminds that you're buying CIA propaganda that actually they knew this was going to happen all along. It's pretty blatant rear end covering and throwing everyone else under the bus. CIA propaganda that they knew, or Biden propaganda that no one could have predicted this? A third of the Afghan army only existed on paper, many hadn't been paid in months, and the Kabul government was widely seen as corrupt. There have been reports for years about soldiers just deserting when convenient. What kind of complete dumbass looks at all that information and says 'yep, sure are 300k very real soldiers completely dedicated to fighting to the death'? I mean I know what kind of complete dumbass says that because Biden literally gave a speech saying that a month ago, plus here you are right now saying 'who could have possibly predicted?' 2017 - Assessing the Desertion and "Ghost Soldier" Problem in Afghan 2016 - Desertions deplete Afghan forces, adding to security worries 2015 - Tide of desertions — among highest in recent history — strains Afghan forces 2011 - More Afghan soldiers deserting the army, NATO statistics show Perhaps you should be less invested in assuming the Biden administration is competent
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Aug 19, 2021 19:24
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Sinteres posted:You're so invested in believing the CIA are evil masterminds that you're buying CIA propaganda that actually they knew this was going to happen all along. It's pretty blatant rear end covering and throwing everyone else under the bus. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if some people were saying there would be an imminent collapse, just as there were some saying Ghani would last 2 years. It would be interesting to know the content of some of these briefings. Some politicians are saying the briefings they received were very dire. It would be interesting to get some real examples from these classified briefings. Maybe someone will leak some part of one to prove their point.
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Aug 19, 2021 19:25
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The CIA is known for producing a range of drafts just so they can pull one out later and say hey we predicted this.
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Aug 19, 2021 19:27
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This thread, circa 2003: Of course Saddam has weapons of mass destruction! The government wouldn't just make something up to justify a grudge war to enrich a few people with connections to the administration. If you think they would just lie about this you're just being paranoid. Grow up, America isn't some moustache twirling cartoonishly evil villain. You're just falling for propaganda (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Aug 19, 2021 19:38
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Nix Panicus posted:This thread, circa 2003: Of course Saddam has weapons of mass destruction! The government wouldn't just make something up to justify a grudge war to enrich a few people with connections to the administration. If you think they would just lie about this you're just being paranoid. Grow up, America isn't some moustache twirling cartoonishly evil villain. You're just falling for propaganda I see we're at the inventing a poster to get mad at stage of things.
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Aug 19, 2021 19:40
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Nix Panicus posted:This thread, circa 2003: Of course Saddam has weapons of mass destruction! The government wouldn't just make something up to justify a grudge war to enrich a few people with connections to the administration. If you think they would just lie about this you're just being paranoid. Grow up, America isn't some moustache twirling cartoonishly evil villain. You're just falling for propaganda Reminder that you suggested 9/11 was just a pretext and we really wanted to invade Afghanistan to plant opium.
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Aug 19, 2021 19:40
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There's definitely one moustache twirling cartoonishly evil villain in this thread.
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Aug 19, 2021 19:43
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Nix Panicus posted:This thread, circa 2003: Of course Saddam has weapons of mass destruction! The government wouldn't just make something up to justify a grudge war to enrich a few people with connections to the administration. If you think they would just lie about this you're just being paranoid. Grow up, America isn't some moustache twirling cartoonishly evil villain. You're just falling for propaganda Just lol. Time for the ignore list. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Aug 19, 2021 19:49
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Nix Panicus posted:Sadly, the CIA did not leave behind a giant cartoon ledger with a written confession and presentation slide deck for those unable to make very simple and obvious connections between events. Right, so you got nothing. Just assertions that multiple posters have pointed out are indeed simplistic, ignore huge amounts of analysis and are frankly quite patronizing to Afghans. Just unsupported allegations you can't back up.
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Aug 19, 2021 20:29
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Rust Martialis posted:Right, so you got nothing. Just assertions that multiple posters have pointed out are indeed simplistic, ignore huge amounts of analysis and are frankly quite patronizing to Afghans. Also, FWIW, I have read Dark Alliance and it is bang on about the CIA's involvement in the drug trade, facilitating importation of drugs into the US for Contra-affiliated drug dealers. It's not that I can't believe the CIA would ever be involved in the drug trade, it's that I doubt the CIA manufactured the invasion of Afghanistan in order to improve production of opium in Afghanistan.
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Aug 19, 2021 20:43
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Panzeh posted:Also, FWIW, I have read Dark Alliance and it is bang on about the CIA's involvement in the drug trade, facilitating importation of drugs into the US for Contra-affiliated drug dealers. It's not that I can't believe the CIA would ever be involved in the drug trade, it's that I doubt the CIA manufactured the invasion of Afghanistan in order to improve production of opium in Afghanistan. Oh gently caress yeah, CIA was and probably is as dirty as gently caress. Well investigated and documented they facilitated drug transport in various theaters. Nix just can't support his claims except by analogy - the historican Alfred McCoy wrote how basically the CIA looked the other way when ISI and Afghan warlords ramped up the opium trade. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jan/09/how-the-heroin-trade-explains-the-us-uk-failure-in-afghanistan A reviewer of his updated book points out at http://www.organized-crime.de/revmcc01.htm "Despite the seeming weight of the evidence, at the end of his book Alfred McCoy is hesitant to arrive at a definite judgment regarding the CIA's responsibility for the global drug trade: "it is difficult to state unequivocally that the individual drug lords allied with the CIA did or did not shape the long-term trajectory of supply and demand within the vastness and complexity of the global drug traffic" (p. 529). However, what McCoy seems to suggest is that had the CIA adopted a rigorous anti-drugs policy and had the war on drugs focused more on demand reduction, then the drug problem could have been less severe by the year 2000." Considering McCoy is a major investigator of CIA involvement in the drug trade, I would have expect his analysis to be a lot more compelling than Nix, who couldn't cite a drat thing that actually supported his claims.
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Aug 19, 2021 20:55
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honestly i broadly agree with nix's take about the cia and drug trafficking and think he's mostly on point, but I disagree that the cia pushed for invasion of afghanistan for the explicit purpose of perpetuating the opium trade. like hell, we didnt need any additional info to invade afghanistan after 9/11, we were out for blood. that said, once we got there? you drat well better believe the cia did all it could to get itself a piece of those narco-profits
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Aug 20, 2021 00:44
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thus, by a constant shifting of rhetorical hot takes, the CIA is simultaneously 1. a bunch of buffoonish physical comedy walnuts and 2. string-pulling puppetmaster overlords carefully masterminding themselves in as the shadow narco-government of a place the size of texas. now, if the taliban would like to celebrate, we left them some perfectly normal cigars
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Aug 20, 2021 01:19
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A big flaming stink posted:honestly i broadly agree with nix's take about the cia and drug trafficking and think he's mostly on point, but I disagree that the cia pushed for invasion of afghanistan for the explicit purpose of perpetuating the opium trade. like hell, we didnt need any additional info to invade afghanistan after 9/11, we were out for blood. Why were they so eager to get narco profits right after having a massive budget increase?
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Aug 20, 2021 01:52
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Grip it and rip it posted:Why were they so eager to get narco profits right after having a massive budget increase? ...because they've shown on numerous occasions in the past to have zero compunctions about utilizing the drug trade for funding and the military industrial complex is just as much of a reflection of the idiocy of Number Go Up as the rest of our godforsaken political economy?
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Aug 20, 2021 01:55
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I just think the idea that the CIA operates as a fully rogue agency that not only doesn't care if their aims align with broader American goals but actively undermine broader American goals solely to expand their drug empire is pretty weird. Like we know the CIA and Pentagon do end up at cross purposes sometimes, so there are clearly disagreements about methods, but while the CIA has definitely flouted congressional oversight, I really don't see them as a shadowy cabal totally unaccountable to the rest of the executive branch. Why would the rest of the government tolerate that? It doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
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Aug 20, 2021 03:21
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Grip it and rip it posted:You think all cia operations were funded with crack and smack? I know that the CIA does fund its operations in part with crack and smack. I'm not saying the whole department is funded this way, but if you don't think the organization that smuggled heroin in SE Asia didn't have a hand in opium and heroin production in SE Asia you're naive or getting paid to be dense.
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Aug 20, 2021 14:31
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the dude's edging closer to saying Amin and the Khalqists were CIA who sabotaged the country in order to draw the soviets in militarily so they could overthrow the PDPA in a civil war and make a giant opium farm
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Aug 20, 2021 14:46
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Greatbacon posted:I know that the CIA does fund its operations in part with crack and smack. Is there a reason why an organization that has a massive budget would choose to fund certain operations with crack and smack? Perhaps some kind of legal limitation on their ability to otherwise fund certain operations? A big flaming stink posted:...because they've shown on numerous occasions in the past to have zero compunctions about utilizing the drug trade for funding and the military industrial complex is just as much of a reflection of the idiocy of Number Go Up as the rest of our godforsaken political economy? Ah yes, number go up. That's some cutting insight. Maybe you are on to something
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Aug 20, 2021 14:52
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