CEC: Why are Australians in Afghanistan

Media Release  18^th of March 2009

Craig Isherwood‚ National Secretary
PO Box 376‚ COBURG‚ VIC 3058
Phone: 03 9354 0544 Fax: 03 9354 0166
Email: cec@cecaust.com.au
Website: http://www.cecaust.com.au
 

Isherwood: Prosecute a real war on drugs, or get out of Afghanistan

On news of the death of another Australian soldier in Afghanistan today, Citizens Electoral Council leader Craig Isherwood asked, “What are our Aussie troops even doing in Afghanistan, given its rapidly growing drug production, and associated organised crime drug-lord rings?”

Mr Isherwood said, “In 2001, the year that the US invaded Afghanistan to oust the ultra orthodox Islamic Taliban which harboured the infamous terrorist group al-Qaeda, Afghanistan produced less than 100 tons of opium. In 2007, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Afghanistan’s opium production was 8,240 tons! US official agencies report an equivalent of 8,000 tons. This is an increase of 80 times the opium production.

“This opium, converted to heroin, generates about US$4 billion to those Afghans who control the drug business and related crime, while the street value in Europe of that heroin is US$132 billion.”

Mr Isherwood said, that the five southern provinces of Afghanistan; Helmand, Nimroz, Farah, Uruzgan and Kandahar produce 80% of the country’s opium, but are patrolled by more than 8,300 British troops in collaboration with a few thousand Canadian and Australian troops.

“What is going on that since 2001 the opium production has skyrocketed, particularly in these British, Australian and Canadian areas?”

Mr Isherwood said, that on 27^th January this year, UNODC director Antonio Costa reported that the world drug trade is so big that it could be considered the most important of all world agricultural markets worth over US$320 billion, and a large proportion of this money is being channelled into the banking systems of Europe.

Lyndon LaRouche’s publication Executive Intelligence Review, which published a best-selling book in 1978 called Dope, Inc. reported in its 27^th February edition, that the flow of drug money into the banking system could be as high as US$1 trillion annually.

Mr Isherwood asked, “Are our troops, with British and Canadian troops, being misused, in effect, to protect the drug lords, and consequently the huge amount of drug money now flowing into the disintegrating, crisis-hit Western banks? If we were to significantly increase our troop numbers in Afghanistan, what’s going to be done to stop opium production from increasing as it has done in the last eight years?

“As we now know, the so-called war on terror was a Bush-Cheney fantasy; what we need is what LaRouche has fought for since the early 1980s—a real war on drugs, using modern technology to wipe out the drug crops, the locations of which are well known, like the opium fields of Afghanistan, or can be easily identified using satellite technology.”

Mr Isherwood concluded, “Unless our soldiers in Afghanistan are going to be deployed for such a mission, they should be brought home, instead of being exposed to danger for no good reason.”