UK spies to run $100bn Afghan drug industry: Analsyt

Britain’s foreign intelligence agency is planning to send more spies to Afghanistan to manage a $100-billion drug industry, a US political commentator says.

Gordon Duff, a senior editor at Veterans Today, made the remarks during an interview with Press TV on Tuesday, two days after The Telegraph revealed in a report that the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), also known as MI6, appealed for extra staff from other intelligence agencies for Afghanistan after British troops leave in 2014.

“I think they are going to Afghanistan to help manage the 100-billion-dollar-a year drug industry, moving heroin through Afghanistan, managing the banking for the heroin industry through London banks. I cannot think of anything else they would do there,” Duff said.

“There is no history of terrorism involving Afghanistan and Britain or Afghanistan and the United States, that was long disproven, this debunked over a decade ago,” he added.

The United States and its allies invaded Afghanistan on October 7, 2001 as part of Washington’s so-called war on terror. The offensive removed the Taliban from power, but after more than 12 years, the foreign troops have still not been able to establish security in the country.

There are currently over 100,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan. The US has announced plans to pull out all foreign combat troops by the end of 2014.

Opium cultivation in Afghanistan has been on the rise since the US-led war began, with the Central Asian country producing about 90 percent of the world’s opium.

Several reports by the United Nations affirm that Afghan opium is having a devastating impact on the world, killing thousands in consumer countries.

Commenting on the long involvement of US and UK intelligence agencies in drug trade, Duff said, “The CIA, MI6 and other intelligence agencies have been running drug trafficking in the world, certainly, since [the] Vietnam” war.

“The British intelligence services were running world drug trafficking in the 1840s at the time of the Opium Wars,” he said, referring to the Anglo-Chinese Wars (1839-1860) over opium trade between China and Great Britain.

“They have always managed the world’s opium and heroin trafficking. It is something the British Empire is known for. The British began heroin, certainly opium production, in Afghanistan. It is their industry. They have been doing it for well over a hundred years and it is extremely profitable. It funds all of their other activities and there is no reason for them to want to leave it.”