The paragraph I found most intriguing in the Afghanistan narco-traffic article is this one:
"His (Karzai's)administration has included known drug lords, and many of his provincial governors, police and army chiefs are widely rumored to profit from the trade, diplomats and Afghan officials acknowledge. Commanders of the powerful Northern Alliance, which with American help overthrew the Taliban in 2001, continue to profit from the trade in northeastern Badakhshan Province."
It is really hard to imagine how this mess is going to be cleaned up. Somewhat like the situation in South America under Reagan, American policy supports the drug lords because whenever we have a foreign policy interest, we are not very interested in who the players are. Do you remember the Iran Contra mess, where we ended up using profits from the South American cocaine trade to fund secret military missions that Congress would not approve? This smells just as bad, I think.
I don't think Karzai would survive unless we propped him up. There will be sheer chaos there soon enough, since we didn't finish one thing before starting another. We will probably end up defoliating the place, killing lots of innocent animals and humans, but then we are a very wonderful country with great programs and policies, aren't we? |
