Dean Henderson: CIA Created Afghan Heroin Trade

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has good reasons for trying to shut down US investigations into corruption in his government. The Afghan aristocracy has always run the nation's heroin trade. But it was the CIA that created it. In 1933 King Mohammed Zaher Shah took the throne in Afghanistan, ruling the country in feudalistic fashion until he was disposed by his cousin Mohammed Daoud in 1973. A handful of families, including the Karzais and the Kalilzidads owned nearly all arable land, while most Afghans languished amidst some of the planet's worst poverty. Finally, they'd had enough. In April 1978 King Daoud was killed in a revolution led by Nor Mohammed Taraki , who became President. Taraki embarked upon an ambitious land reform program to help poor Afghan sharecroppers who were traditionally forced to work the land owned by the king and his cronies. He built schools for women, who were banned from education under the monarchy. He opened Afghan universities to the poor and introduced free health care. When counter revolutionary bandits began to burn down universities and girl's schools, many Afghan's saw the hand of the CIA. By April 1979, a full seven months before the much ballyhooed Soviet "invasion" of Afghanistan, US officials were meeting with corrupt Afghan warlords and oligarchs bent on overthrowing Taraki. As the campaign of sabotage intensified, Kabul revolutionaries called on Soviet leader Leonid Brezynev to send troops to repel the bandits. Brezynev refused. The situation deteriorated. Pro Taraki militants, convinced of a CIA destabilization plot, assassinated CIA Kabul Chief of Station Spike Dubbs. On July 3, 1979 President Carter signed the first national security directive authorizing secret aid to Afghan warlords. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski said later that he had convinced Carter that in his, "opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention." Brzezinski, who co founded the Trilateral Commission with David Rockefeller, was baiting the Soviets to invade Afghanistan. The embattled Taraki appointed Tabizullah Amin as cabinet minister in charge of land reform. Amin launched a brutal campaign of terror against political opponents, turning world opinion against the previously celebrated Taraki government.