Residents of Marjah, Afghanistan are worried that a battle between U.S. troops and Taliban forces is about to break out in one of the country’s most doped-out valleys. Many have left what the AFP describes as “one of the world’s main sources of heroin and for eight years a major bastion of Taliban insurgents.” And presumably junkies too! |AFP|
Photo: Julie Jacobson/AP via NPR
Not surprisingly, the Taliban has claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing at a U.S. base in Afghanistan yesterday that killed 8 CIA agents. The bomber somehow snuck onto the base and detonated his bomb-vest inside of the compound’s fitness center. |LA Times|
Although it’ll take months to deploy 30,000 additional US troops into Afghanistan, the military has already dispatched a deadly fleet to the theater of combat: drones. Hopefully these aren’t the easily hackable ones. |AP|
The Russian version of the DEA announced that it will share its information on Afghan drugs with U.S. authorities if they agree to respond in kind reports RIA Novosti. The head of the agency, Viktor Ivanov, apparently brokered a drugs for drug lords arrangement: “We will transfer to the Americans 175 brands of drugs made in Afghanistan. In exchange, we expect to receive from our U.S. partners data on 50 Afghan drug lords.” |RIA Novosti|
According to U.N. officials, there’s cartels in Afghanistan that have more opium stashed away than all the world’s junkie populations combined could imagine. “[Perhaps more than 10,000 tons of illegal opium — worth billions of dollars and enough to satisfy at least two years of world demand — is now secretly stockpiled,” reports the New York Times. |NYT|
Photo via MilitaryPhotos
It’s election day in Afghanistan and to help monitor the polls, a “state-of-the-art observation balloon with round-the-clock video and sound surveillance capability has been installed several thousand feet above Kabul.” International synergy: it’s just like one flying over the U.S. – Canadian border. |WaPost|
Jesse Purcell is releasing the “2nd edition of a print” he did at the “beginning of the Canadian/American invasion of Afghanistan.” Highlighting a certain breakfast cereal brand’s commitment to the military operation, the artist explains the imagery: “Kellogs had been given a huge amount of money to do emergency food aid and were busy shipping off tonnes of processed food which was past it’s best before date. The airdropped food marked “A gift from the people of the United States of America” was received with a fair amount of mistrust particularly after a huge crate of Pop Tarts went through a family’s roof and and crushed a baby in it’s crib.” The print measures 22×29.5 inches and comes unsigned/unnumbered ($25). |JustSeeds|
As the powers that be continue to blame the Taliban for the global supply of heroin despite being hunted by NATO troops and Predator drones daily, the Afghan government has called for a countrywide ban on opium. So far, its produced mostly disastrous results for local economies and farmers, with many families unable to even afford bubble gum for their kids. One good crop used to cover expenses for a year, but now they’re flat broke, just like Americans! But it gets worse. There’s also evidence that this aggressive prohibition it’s totally leading to a backlash against the government and could stoke terrorist recruiting. |AP|
Oh no! Just when cocaine was emerging as the new weed, the Daily News reported on a major heroin bust that netted approximately a “half-million glassine envelopes” of dope in the Bronx. The feds are citing this as proof that the drug is making a big comeback in the U.S. and on the streets of NYC. In what should probably be considered related news, despite the Taliban being on run for almost a decade and the Pentagon dumping more military assets into Afghanistan, not to mention the CIA’s human-hunting drones, the tiny country is somehow still responsible for producing a whopping 93% of the world’s heroin supply according to the U.N. Read more »
Three U.S. soldiers, some more prepared than others, “took defensive positions in the Korengal Valley of Afghanistan’s Kunar Province” earlier this week. |WSJ|
Photo by David Guttendfelder/AP
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