While the U.S. is now admitting that they are losing the war in Afghanistan (see the statement from Gen. McChrystal after the following article), the Russians are mobilizing Asia and the world to demand that the British opium war, based on the protection of the Afghan opium production by British and American troops, be crushed immediately. EIR's Rachel Douglas has prepared this report, including Lyndon LaRouche's message to the event in Moscow.
Mike Billington ------
Russia Calls for International Coalition Against Afghan Drugs
by Rachel Douglas
June 12--At the International Forum on Drug Production in
Afghanistan: A Challenge to the International Community, held
June 9-10 in Moscow, Russian officials called for the speedy
formation of an international coalition to stop narcotics
production and trafficking, in and from Afghanistan. Russia,
currently losing 30,000 young people annually to death by Afghan
heroin, would lead the coalition. President Dmitri Medvedev,
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, and Federal Narcotics Control
Service chief Victor Ivanov addressed the meeting.
New violence in Kyrgyzstan, a Central Asian country affected
by Afghan drug flows and related criminal and terrorist activity,
broke out just as the Drug Production in Afghanistan event was
ending, and as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit
took place in Uzbekistan.
U.S. economist Lyndon LaRouche's greeting and memorandum to
the Moscow event (see {EIR} Online, June 11, 2010) was released
in Russian translation for circulation among Forum participants.
In the memo, LaRouche explained that an end to the Afghanistan
drug plague, and the British perpetual imperial war strategy of
which it is a part, depends on nations making a decisive break
with thousands of years of imperial monetarist practice, and the
past 250 years of British imperial domination, in particular.
Indeed, Russian patriotic forces who have rallied to the
fight against the heroin onslaught are impelled towards being
anti-British, but crucial aspects of Russian policy remain
trapped in City of London schemes.
- International Security Threat -
Victor Ivanov, who headed the organizing committee for the
Forum, and was a keynote speaker, brought out the strategic
dimension of the Afghanistan drug boom, recounting not only the
impact of drug consumption on the population, but the drug-money
financing of terrorism worldwide. Russia's North Caucasus and the
Uighur-populated regions of China are especially affected areas,
Ivanov pointed out.
Ivanov had given the Forum an early start on June 7 by
addressing a Germany-Russia webcast teleconference from Berlin,
where he was attending a related event on Central Asia and
Afghanistan. In the teleconference and in Russian TV interviews,
Ivanov hammered at the need for Afghanistan-origin narcotics to
be declared an international security threat. Afghanistan today
produces double the amount of opium which the {entire world}
produced ten years ago, said Ivanov, and these drugs have become
a destabilizing factor for Russia and Europe. Ivanov warned that
Europe, with narcotics consumption of 711 tons opium-equivalent
annually, is in the same boat as Russia, which consumes 549 tons.
He underscored the death toll: 1 million people in the past
decade, one-third of them Russians.
The teleconference was chaired by Svetlana Mironyuk, senior
editor at RIA Novosti, which also operated the International
Forum. Presenting the concept of the event, Mironyuk agreed with
Ivanov that ``the solution lies in the system of international
relations, in the positions different nations take.''
Medvedev, speaking June 9 at the Moscow Forum, called the
``globalization of criminal flows'' of drugs a danger to the
whole world, also citing the role of drug money in funding
terrorism. Lavrov presented the Russian policy he had laid out in
testimony to the State Duma several weeks earlier, saying that
Afghan narcotics should be declared a threat to international
peace and security. ``We consider it absolutely necessary,''
Lavrov added, ``to include in the mandate of the international
security forces in Afghanistan, the duty to fight the drug
business more effectively, including by destroying opium poppy
plantings and heroin laboratories.''
Another Russian government official, Deputy Prime Minister
Sergei Ivanov, took the Afghanistan dope campaign to the
Shangri-la Dialogue in Singapore, a June 6 conference sponsored
by the British International Institute for Strategic Studies
(IISS). In the presence of U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert
Gates, and officials from around Asia, Ivanov called narcotics
production and trafficking in and from Afghanistan ``a threat to
world peace and security,'' and stated that international forces
present in the country ``ought to deal with this directly, and
move to actively fighting this threat.''
- International Alliance Needed -
Among the international speakers at the Forum were Antonio
Maria Costa, executive director of the UN Office on Drugs and
Crime (UNODC), and Hamid Ghodse, chairman of the UN International
Narcotics Control Board (INCB). Former UNODC head Pino Arlacchi,
an expert on organized crime and drug trafficking, told Novosti
that Russia and Europe are suffering the most from Afghan heroin,
and should cooperate on a ``plan aimed at halting opium poppy
cultivation in Afghanistan, including not only crop eradication,
but also creating a special program, giving Afghan people living
sources, different from producing narcotics.'' Arlacchi said he
agreed with Victor Ivanov on this, adding that ``Russia is not
only a vital power in maintaining world stability and
international dialogue, but it can play a leading role together
with Europe in implementing change in Afghanistan.... Such a
shift should have been done ten years ago, specifically, halting
drug production in the country.''
Alexander Rahr of the German Council on Foreign Relations,
which had hosted Sergei Ivanov at the June 6-7 German conference
in Potsdam and Berlin, was another participant from Europe.
According to on-the-scene reports, the highest ranking Americans
at the Forum were an acting deputy director for supply reduction
from the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, and
U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Beyrle. Russian press played up a
Novosti interview with the latter, who once again tried to
justify not destroying the opium crops. Russia's Ambassador to
NATO Dmitri Rogozin attacked this position during his speech, as
an ``illogical'' contrast with successful U.S. eradication
efforts in Colombia.
Besides eradication, there are other steps the United States
could take, for which Russian officials indicated the Obama
Administration has shown scant zeal. In concluding remarks on
June 10, Victor Ivanov reiterated that he has handed American
officials (he met drug czar Gil Kerlikowske May 23 during the
latter's Moscow airport stopover) lists of drug traffickers known
to be in U.S.-controlled areas of Afghanistan, as well as the
locations of drug-processing labs. ``We are now waiting for
information from our American colleagues,'' he said. RIA Novosti,
in an overview wire about the International Forum, said that
participants were in agreement that ``NATO's refusal to destroy
opium poppy plantings in Afghanistan ... is blocking the process
of combating the threat from Afghan narcotics, which are killing
hundreds of thousands of people and helping to finance world
terrorism.''
- Obama's Treachery -
The lack of response from the Obama Administration to the
Russian offer for an alliance against the drug trade, an offer
first made in the Winter of 2009, can only be explained by the
British control over the U.S. President.
It is no secret to anyone in the U.S. military or
Administration, that the burgeoning opium trade in Afghanistan is
the prime source of financing for the Taliban, and the insurgency
generally--not to mention the international banking channels
which launder the proceeds. Nor is it unknown that the drug
lords, who have been predominantly located in the British
stronghold of Helmand Province, and have been protected by the
British, run a brutal dictatorship over the local farmers,
forcing them to produce the opium crop, or face punitive
consequences.
Why, then, would a U.S. President turn a blind eye, or even
facilitate, the continuance of a drug trade that is financing the
death of his own troops? Isn't the only proper name for such a
policy, {treason}? Look at the cascade of death now hitting U.S.
and NATO forces in the area. How can any patriot, not to mention
a true President, fail to take the weapon out of the enemy's
hand?
- Destabilization Spreading -
Military and economic dimensions of the anti-dope fight came
into focus at the International Forum, as well as the SCO summit
in Tashkent.
Riots broke out June 10-11 in Osh, in southern Kyrgyzstan,
killing at least 60 people and injuring hundreds. The area is the
home region of former President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, ousted in
April. Speaking at the SCO summit, the acting Kyrgyz foreign
minister described the clashes as gang warfare. They involve a
clan element, as well as ethnic conflict between Kyrgyz and
Uzbeks. The region has been cited as a drug transshipment route,
as well as an expansion area of the radical Islamic Movement of
Uzbekistan.
On June 12, Acting President of Kyrgyzstan Roza Otunbayeva
asked for Russian military assistance, though so far, Russia's
special envoy for Kyrgyzstan, Vladimir Rushailo, has pledged only
humanitarian help. At the same time, Russia's close attention to
its interests in Central Asia was also emphasized in military
terms at the Forum on Afghan Drug Production, where Victor Ivanov
said Russia should move to return its armed forces to the
Tajik-Afghan border, because current policing is inadequate to
stop the drug traffic.
The SCO also discussed the Afghan drug threat, the global
economic crisis, and regional infrastructure projects.
The International Forum, too, heard a vigorous appeal for
radically changing the economic model in the region. Yuri Krupnov
of the Institute of Demography, Migration, and Regional
Development (IDMRD),
for developing a new economic model for Afghanistan. He said that
an international team of economic development specialists should
put together such a program, including ``serious consideration of
building a science city,'' and developing the country's eastern
and southern provinces, not only the capital city of Kabul.
infrastructure development of Afghanistan and Central Asia
appeared in {EIR}, Feb. 27, 2009.
June 14, 2010 (LPAC)—President Obama's plan for "winning" the war in Afghanistan by July 2011 took a hit, when his commander in that country, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, admitted, last week, that the planned NATO offensive in Kandahar had to be postponed because of lack of support among the Kandaharis. "When you go to protect the people, the people have to want you to protect them," he told reporters in Brussels. McChrystal's statement followed hard on the heels of a front page story in the Washington Post detailing NATO's failed offensive in Marja. The 15,000 NATO troops in Marja have not been able to make the population, of about 35,000, feel safe from the Taliban, and Afghan government officials and police who were sent to Marja in the wake of the NATO offensive have been largely absent since. On top of that, the USAID went in with enough funding to employ 10,000 local Afghans for development projects but has only been able to hire 1,200.
As if that wasn't enough, the New York Times followed with a story on Friday that Afghan president Hamid Karzai has lost all faith in the ability of the U.S. and NATO to defeat the Taliban and protect the people. Karzai, according to this story, has therefore undertaken secret negotiations with the Taliban outside the purview of the U.S. and NATO.
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