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MONDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 2009
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US-Built Bridge Supports Afghan Drug Trade

$37M project facilitates opium smuggling into Tajikistan

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(Newser) – A US-built bridge linking Afghanistan and Tajikistan that cost taxpayers $37 million has greatly benefited exporters of Afghan opium, McClatchy reports. The bridge over the Panj river was supposed to facilitate commerce between the two nations, but the surging flow of opium across Afghanistan’s northern border threatens to turn Tajikistan—still weakened from 5 years of civil war in the 1990s—into a narco-state.

"It's an issue of money," one Afghan trucker said of his colleagues. "If you give them money, you can do whatever you want." The UN estimates that 4 metric tons of opium—which can produce 12 million doses of street heroin—crossed the northern Afghan border every day last year. The US knows of the problem, but fears pressuring the Tajik regime because it needs the country’s support to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan.

People walk along a bridge unveiled at the Tajik-Afghan border in Nizhny Pyandzh, Tajikistan, Sunday, Aug. 26, 2007.
People walk along a bridge unveiled at the Tajik-Afghan border in Nizhny Pyandzh, Tajikistan, Sunday, Aug. 26, 2007.   (AP Photo)
People walk along a bridge unveiled at the Tajik-Afghan border in Nizhny Pyandzh, Tajikistan, Sunday, Aug. 26, 2007.
People walk along a bridge unveiled at the Tajik-Afghan border in Nizhny Pyandzh, Tajikistan, Sunday, Aug. 26, 2007.   (AP Photo)
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The Americans want to have a logistics base here, so do you think they're going to pressure the government about corruption? The answer is no.
- William Lawrence, a chief adviser for a UN Afghan border-management program based in Dushanbe.

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12 comments
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UrUndertaker
Jun 28, 09 4:54 PM CDT
Good to know that our American tax dollars are helping impoverished countries build thriving trade..../sarcasm ........................... On a lighter note, it is disgusting but if a vote is taken I vote we built it we blow the crap out of it. Reply
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+5
polstroad
Jun 28, 09 4:58 PM CDT
90% of the world's heroin comes from Afghanistan. Where is our war on drugs? Reply
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+2
UrUndertaker
Jun 28, 09 5:03 PM CDT
War on Drugs my eye, the US GOV has enabled more drug traffickers and cartels that you have hair on your head since way back in the day of Ollie North and the Contra's, drugs for guns were the rule of thumb way back then. Actually even before that it helped finance some aspects of the Vietnam war by allowing village chiefs access to outside sales areas they remained "loyal" to the CIA who were enabling them,. War on Drugs my asprin bottle. Reply
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+5
IN RESPONSE:
Reader64481089
Jun 28, 09 5:08 PM CDT
Yea, when I was in country there was a really big stink about someone (an unnamed group) which used dead US Servicemen bodies to ship heroin to the US by cutting open the corpse and hollowing it out then filling the chest cavity with black tar heroin,
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+4
IN RESPONSE:
JonmarkP
Jun 28, 09 7:24 PM CDT
The CIA moved into big-time drug dealing by taking over the Italian heroin trade after WWII, justifying its activity by citing "the need to fight communism." Astonished by how much money could be made, they expanded into Asian heroin in the 1950's, then into cocaine to fund the Contras and into crack in the 1980's. The CIA is as addicted to drug trafficking as addicts are to the drugs themselves. A good text on the subject is "White-out: CIA, Drugs and the Press."
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