Former Blackwater Gets Rich As Afghan Drug Production Hits Record High

H/t reader squodgy:

“The Taliban were the ones who tried to eradicate both Opium & Marijuana production.

This starved the CIA of its main income source needed to fund covert ‘black ops’.

Invading Afghanistan had no purpose other than to reinstate that income flow.

This article is pure disinfo apart from the fact that it was and still is a cash cow for the Military Industrial Complex.”

Flashback:

Does Obama Want to Stay in Afghanistan to Harvest Its Opium? (Global Research, June 9, 2014):

“opium production has increased 33 fold from 185 tons in 2001 to 6100 tons in 2006. In 2007, Afghanistan provided approximately 93% of the global supply of heroin…”

So it’s really:

Opium poppy cultivation is up in Afghanistan despite because the infamous mercenary firm formerly known as Blackwater being paid $569m by the Pentagon to stop it guard it.


An Afghan farmer harvests in an opium poppy field in Jalalabad, Afghanistan on 27 March 2015. Afghanistan is listed as world’s largest opium producer.
An Afghan farmer harvests in an opium poppy field in Jalalabad, Afghanistan on 27 March 2015. Afghanistan is listed as world’s largest opium producer.

Former Blackwater gets rich as Afghan drug production hits record high (Guardian, March 31, 2015):

Opium poppy cultivation is up in Afghanistan despite the infamous mercenary firm formerly known as Blackwater being paid $569m by the Pentagon to stop it

In a war full of failures, the US counternarcotics mission in Afghanistan stands out: opiate production has climbed steadily over recent years to reach record-high levels last year.

Yet there is a clear winner in the anti-drug effort – not the Afghan people, but the infamous mercenary company formerly known as Blackwater.

Statistics released on Tuesday reveal that the rebranded private security firm, known since 2011 as Academi, reaped over half a billion dollars from the futile Defense Department push to eradicate Afghan narcotics, some 32% of the $1.8bn in contracting money the Pentagon has devoted to the job since 2002.

The company is by far the biggest beneficiary of counternarcotics largesse in Afghanistan. Its closest competition, the defense giant Northrop Grumman, claimed $250m.

According to the US inspector general for Afghanistan “reconstruction”, the $569m Academi got from US taxpayers paid for “training, equipment, and logistical support” to Afghan forces conducting counternarcotics, such as “the Afghan National Interdiction Unit, the Ministry of Interior, and the Afghan Border Police”.

Far from eradicating the deep-rooted opiate trade, US counternarcotics efforts have proven useless, according to a series of recent official inquiries. Other aspects of the billions that the US has poured into Afghanistan over the last 13 years of war have even contributed to the opium boom.

In December, the United Nations reported a 60% growth in Afghan land used for opium poppy cultivation since 2011, up to 209,000 hectares. The estimated $3bn value of Afghan heroin and morphine represents some 15% of Afghan GDP.

“Given the growth in opium poppy cultivation, it must be assumed that the Taliban’s income from the illegal trade in narcotics has remained an important factor in generating assets for the group,” the United Nations reported.

That same month, the US inspector general for Afghanistan warned that the opium trade would surely rise as international aid money flees the country with the winding down of the war. Yet the inspector general also noted that US reconstruction projects, particularly those devoted to “improved irrigation, roads, and agricultural assistance” were probably leading to the explosion in opium cultivation.

“[A]ffordable deep-well technology turned 200,000 hectares of desert in southwestern Afghanistan into arable land over the past decade,” the inspector general found, concluding that “much of this newly arable land is dedicated to opium cultivation”.

Academi and its former Blackwater incarnation have an infamous history in Afghanistan. It once set up shell companies to disguise its business practices, according to a Senate report, so that its contracts would be unimpeded by company employees’ killings of Iraqi and Afghan civilians.

Blackwater’s founder, Erik Prince, sold the company – then renamed “Xe” – in 2010. Under new ownership, the firm occasionally gestures toward emphasizing its original business training military and police personnel, but it has never quite divested itself of its security contracting business.

In 2010, Blackwater was one of a group of firms selected by the State Department for its $10bn contract to protect its diplomats worldwide, precisely the mission Blackwater performed when its agents opened fire on Iraqi civilians at Baghdad’s Nisour Square in 2007 and turned the company into the ugly face of private security. The following year, the firm’s newly installed CEO pledged, “We’re not backing away from security services.”

A spokesman for Academi’s parent company, the Constellis Group, said that the current firm had separated itself from its Blackwater ancestry.

“When the ownership of Constellis Group purchased our Moyock, N.C. training facility in 2010, Blackwater as the world knew it ceased to exist,” said spokesman Tom McCuin.

“Since then, the new ownership, through a completely new management team, have worked diligently to establish a reputation for competence and accountability. I realize that for many skeptics, we have a long way to go toward winning their trust, and that for some, nothing we do will ever change their view. I can only reiterate how committed we are to delivering what we promise.”

US-Special-Forces-Military-Opium-Heroin

Related info:

America’s $7.6 BILLION ‘War’ On Afghan Drugs ‘Fails’, Opium Production Peaks (RT, Oct 21, 2014):

The Consequences Of America’s Invasion Of Afghanistan: NYC Heroin Deaths Highest In A Decade (ZeroHedge)

Does Obama Want to Stay in Afghanistan to Harvest Its Opium? (Global Research):

“opium production has increased 33 fold from 185 tons in 2001 to 6100 tons in 2006. In 2007, Afghanistan provided approximately 93% of the global supply of heroin…”

Afghanistan Opium Harvest At Record High (BBC News)

How Opium Greed Is Keeping US Troops in Afghanistan | Brainwash Update (Video)

Afghanistan: $37 Million Aviation Facility May Have Been Used To Store OPIUM (Reuters)

Big Oil’s Central Asian Mafia (Veterans Today)

U.S. Kicks Drug-War Habit, Makes ‘Peace’ With Afghan Poppies (Wired)

Veterans Today’s Gordon Duff: Obama’s Drone Strikes On Pakistan Not Targeting Terrorists, But Securing $80 Billion US Opium Empire

Afghanistan: Opium Cultivation Rose Substantially In 2012 (New York Times)

Afghan Opium Poppy Farming Increases 20%, Fuelled By High Opium Prices (Guardian)

CIA Created Afghan Heroin Trade (Veterans Today)

Afghanistan: Is Creating A ‘Narco-State’ Considered ‘Nation-Building?’ (Veterans Today)

Brought To You By Poppy Bush, Obama Bin Bush And Al-CIAda: Photos Of U.S. And Afghan Troops Patrolling Poppy Fields June 2012 (Public Intelligence)

Breaking News: Afghanistan – America’s ‘Total Lie War’ (Veterans Today)

Afghanistan: Heroin Production Rose Between 2001 And 2011 From Just 185 Tons To A Staggering 5,800 Tons/Year (Daily Mail)

Afghan Opium Production Increases By 61 Percent, Opium Yield Rises 133 Percent From 2010 (AFP)

War On Drugs Revealed As Total Hoax: US Military Admits To Guarding, Assisting Lucrative Opium Trade In Afghanistan (Natural News)

Afghan Opium Production ‘Rises By 61%’ Compared With 2010 – Per-Hectare Price Of Opium More Than Doubled (BBC News)

AFGHANISTAN-OPIUM

soldier-opium-field-afghanistan1

US soldier in opium field

Over 20 Tons of Heroin Seized in Afghanistan

Obama-bin-Bush

1 thought on “Former Blackwater Gets Rich As Afghan Drug Production Hits Record High”

  1. Stop it? According to the India Times, The main reason for their recent heroin epidemic is because Blackwater was so effectively guarding the shipments to their destinations

    Reply

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