Peter W. Galbraith vs Hamid Karzai

Apparently, Karzai didn't promise Galbraith as good a deal as the Iraqi Kurdish leaders: "Mr. Eide, who is set to leave his job as head of the United Nations mission in Afghanistan by early next year, said Mr. Galbraith's departure from Afghanistan in early September came immediately after he rejected what he described as Mr. Galbraith's proposal to replace Mr. Karzai and install a more Western-friendly figure" (James Glanz and Richard A. Oppel, Jr., "U.N. Officials Say American Offered Plan to Replace Karzai," New York Times, 17 December 2009).

Dead Man Walking?

America does its imperialism as it does its capitalism: when a business fails, blame employees.

A White House favorite -- a celebrity in flowing cape and dark gray fez -- in each of the seven years that he has led this country since the fall of the Taliban, Mr. Karzai now finds himself not so favored at all. Not by Washington, and not by his own.

In the White House, President Obama said he regarded Mr. Karzai as unreliable and ineffective. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said he presided over a "narco-state." The Americans making Afghan policy, worried that the war is being lost, are vowing to bypass Mr. Karzai and deal directly with the governors in the countryside.

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Meanwhile, the Obama administration will have to decide what it wants from Mr. Karzai as it tries to make good on its promise to reverse the course of the war. Or whether it wants him at all. (Dexter Filkins, "Afghan Leader Finds Himself Hero No More," New York Times, 8 February 2009)

Mr. Karzai may have sealed his fate by finally beginning to show signs of independent thinking last year and coming up with a sensible strategy to boot:

At a news conference in Kabul, the Afghan capital, Mr. Karzai coupled his offer of safe passage to Mr. Omar with a warning to the Western nations that support his government, saying that if they opposed an assurance of safety for Mr. Omar they would have to remove Mr. Karzai as president or withdraw their troops from Afghanistan.

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Mr. Karzai has recently toughened his tone when speaking of the American-led coalition in ways that appear to have been aimed at gaining wider support at home. Among other things, he has demanded that the coalition make more measured use of air power to reduce civilian casualties from bomb and missile attacks. With his warning that he would guarantee Mr. Omar's safety, he appeared to have taken one step further in marking his distance from the coalition. (John F. Burns, "Karzai Offers Safe Passage to Taliban Leader If He Agrees to Talks" New York Times, 17 November 2008)

Multinational Investors' Vote of Confidence in Ultra-imperialism

Check out multinational investors' major vote of confidence in ultra-imperialism today: John Willman, "Markets Cheer Bank Bail-outs" (Financial Times, 13 October 2008); Ralph Atkins, "European Banks Offer Unlimited Dollar Funding" (Financial Times, 13 October 2008); "Full Text: US Treasury Tarp Plans" (Financial Times, 13 October 2008); Louise Story and Andrew Ross Sorkin, "Morgan Agrees to Revise Terms of Mitsubishi Deal" (New York Times, 13 October 2008); "Gulf Shares Surge as UAE and Qatar Act (Financial Times, 12 October 2008); and Robin Wigglesworth and Simeon Kerr, "UAE Leads Drive to Stem Crisis" (Financial Times, 13 October 2008).

It's true that, if China, Japan, Germany, Saudi Arabia, and the United States functioned as one politically (if not legally) coherent establishment, Americans would be back in the black:

Global Balance of Payments ($bn, 2007)

SOURCE: Martin Wolf, "Asia's Revenge," Financial Times, 9 October 2008, p. 9.

That's the level at which the ruling classes have built their post-WW2 hegemony (cf. Kees van der Pijl, The Making of an Atlantic Ruling Class; and Gavan McCormack, Client State: Japan in the American Embrace; etc.).

Therefore, a radical shift in global class relations could come only if there were a radical shift in any one of the aforementioned countries, but these are the very ones where the Left has the least chance in the world.

Is China, though, a weak or strong link in this chain of empire (to which Latin socialists, Islamists from the Hindu Kush to the Persian Gulf to the Horn of Africa to the Niger Delta, Maoists in Nepal and India, the national security interests of Russia, etc. have provided a partial material -- if ideologically incoherent -- counterweight)?

Update

"[T]he needs of our economy require that our financial institutions not take this new capital to hoard it, but to deploy it" ("Text: Henry Paulson Remarks Tuesday," 15 October 2008).

"Investors are recognizing that the financial crisis is not the fundamental problem. It has merely amplified economic ailments that are now intensifying: vanishing paychecks, falling home prices and diminished spending. And there is no relief in sight" (Peter S. Goodman, "Markets Suffer as Investors Weigh Relentless Trouble," New York Times, 16 October 2008).

What Western Diplomats Said about the Taliban after the Execution of Najibullah in 1996

On 27 September 1996, the Taliban executed Mohammad Najibullah, the last president of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. Three days later, John F. Burns reported in the New York Times:

Now, with two-thirds of Afghanistan under their control, the Taliban are closer to ending the fighting than anybody has been since 1979. For Pakistan, peace in Afghanistan would bring a major dividend, including the possibility of re-opening trade routes to Central Asia and curbing the flood of opium, heroin and automatic weapons that have made large parts of Pakistan virtually ungovernable.

Other neighboring countries are deeply wary of the Taliban. For Iran, the Taliban's Islamic militancy is less important than the fact that the Taliban are mostly Sunni Muslims, long at odds with the Shiite Muslims who predominate in Iran.

Iran backed the Government ousted by the Taliban, which was headed by Persian-speaking leaders from Afghanistan's Tajik minority. Russia, wary of the spread of militant Islam to the newly independent Central Asian states, also backed the Government, as did India.

But Western diplomats in Islamabad say that there has been no sign that the Taliban leaders want to spread their beliefs beyond Afghhanistan's frontiers, or that they are inclined to back terrorism. ("New Afghan Rulers Shock Even Their Backers in Pakistan," 30 September 1996)

The Land Question behind the Taliban Resurgence

The Dexter Filkins article below clarifies the main reason for the Taliban resurgence, which looks not unlike an Islamic variant of the Maoist "people's war." Without substantial land reform in the tribal areas, the Taliban will continue to grow in Pakistan. Pressuring the Pakistani government to attack the Taliban militarily in Pakistan so as to deny the Taliban in Afghanistan "strategic depth" (the current main US approach), or worse the US military directly invading the tribal areas in Pakistan (the approach that the US will be increasingly taking), is a recipe for disaster, liable to make the whole of Pakistan, which has not become a coherent nation yet, ungovernable.

Everywhere I traveled during my stay in the tribal areas and in Peshawar, I met impoverished Pakistanis who told me Robin Hood-like stories about how the Taliban had challenged the wealthy and powerful people on behalf of the little guys. Hamidullah, for instance, was an illiterate wheat farmer living in Khyber agency when, in 2002, a wealthy landowner seized his home and six acres of fields. Hamidullah and his family were forced to eke out a living from a nearby shanty. Neither the local malik nor the government agent, Hamidullah told me, would intervene on his behalf. Then came Namdar, the Taliban commander. He hauled the rich man before a Vice and Virtue council and ordered him to give back Hamidullah’s home and farm.

Now Hamidullah is one of Namdar’s loyal militiamen.

“There are so many guys like me,” he said, cradling a Kalashnikov.

The social revolution that has swept the tribal areas does not bode well for the plans, laid out by Governor Ghani, to oust the Taliban by boosting the tribal elders. Nor does it hold out much promise for the Americans, who have expressed hope that they could do in the FATA what they were able to do with the Sunni tribes in Iraq. There, local tribesmen rose up against, and have substantially weakened, Al Qaeda of Mesopotamia. (Dexter Filkins, "Right at the Edge," New York Times, 7 September 2008)

How Far Will the Russians Go?

This just in from the Sunday Times:

Russia is considering increasing its assistance to Iran's nuclear programme in response to America's calls for Nato expansion eastwards and the presence of US Navy vessels in the Black Sea delivering aid to Georgia.

The Kremlin is discussing sending teams of Russian nuclear experts to Tehran and inviting Iranian nuclear scientists to Moscow for training, according to sources close to the Russian military. (Mark Franchetti, "Vladimir Putin Set to Bait US with Nuclear Aid for Tehran," Sunday Times, 7 September 2008)

This report probably isn't true because Sunday Times coverage of Iran as well as Russia has always been full of psychological warfare based on leaks from anonymous sources. But a question does arise: how far will the Russians go in their conflict with the West? Depending on the answer to this question, new possibilities may open up for the states at odds with the empire.

The threat to sell S-300 to Iran and Syria, for instance, is something the Russians have been willing to use (e.g., "Russia May Push Forward with S-300 Sales to Iran, RIA Novosti, 1 September 2008), but if they actually sold it, they could no longer use it as a bargaining chip with the West, so they will probably hold on to it for the time being. But eventually they may decide to act on the threat, as well as cut the Russian routes to supply NATO forces in Afghanistan, if the West (especially the United States, which just announced a $1 billion aid to Georgia, making it "one of the largest recipients of American foreign aid after Israel and Egypt") doesn't cease and desist from its military advancement toward Russia. After all, Russia will be holding its first joint naval exercise with Venezuela on 10-14 November 2008 ("Russian, Venezuelan Navies to Hold Manouvers in Caribbean," ITAR-TASS, 7 September 2008).

Russia, China, and Empire

If Washington is smart, it will try to peel China away from Russia, dropping Tibet and Xinjiang in particular and human rights in general. Then again, though, if Washington were really smart, if wouldn't have invaded Iraq and Afghanistan and tried to work against both Iran and Russia at the same time. Meanwhile, the Chinese are dropping the US agency debt.

"Ask Them for a Few Pointers"

Mike Smith's cartoon in the Las Vegas Sun (15 August 2008) sums up a new geopolitical reality:

Afghanistan Threatens to Become Obama's Vietnam

Afghanistan Threatens to Become Obama's Vietnam
by Christine Buchholz

On the occasion of US Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's visit to Berlin, Christine Buchholz, a member of the Left Party executive board, comments:

Many hopes are tied to Barack Obama, since George W. Bush is the most unpopular American President ever, and Obama promises to improve the social situation and bring the Iraq War to an end.

However, Obama is making a big mistake by identifying Afghanistan as the main battlefield of the "war on terror" and declaring that he will redeploy up to 10,000 more soldiers to the Hindu Kush.  The Iraq War has shown that what the United States and the NATO care about is not freedom from terrorism but their interests in natural resources in a strategically key region.  The war has increased, rather than decreased, the danger of terrorist attacks.

If Obama really seeks to change foreign policy, he must break with Bush's war-mongering.  He should withdraw the troops not only from Iraq but also from Afghanistan and refrain from threatening war against Iran.  The war in Afghanistan is as unwinnable as the war in Iraq.  Afghanistan threatens to become Obama's Vietnam if he doesn't have the courage to defy the neoconservatives and the ruling class.

The Left rejects the transparent plan of the German Federal Government, with Obama's backing in autumn, to have the Bundestag extend the mandate and increase troops in Afghanistan.  War cannot bring peace to Afghanistan.  The German Armed Forces must leave Afghanistan.

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The original statement in German was made available on the Web site of Die Linke on 24 July 2008.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi.

Chicken Littles and Other Problems

DisarmamentActivist.org criticizes anti-war Chicken Littles:

In my absence, one, two, three, many Chicken Littles have emerged in full force to warn of imminent "nuclear war with Iran!!!" See the nuclear fire descend from the skies, transforming humankind into a tribe of Radioactive Zombies!!! From some of these blogs, one would almost think they wish it…

Crackpot newspapers like the UK Independent are gleefully writing about the pospects of war which has been an ongoing theme for the last five years. But there is little more to these stories than there was two years ago. While seriously contingency plans do exist (see Hersh, New Yorker 2006) the 'drumbeat' seems to be mostly coming from our side these days. There is a point where the people who need convincing are going to turn down all this static, so that when the real balloon goes up, nobody will listen. ("War?? Chicken Little Says, Get a Grip," 11 April 2008)

I agree that war against Iran is unlikely in the short term, and most of the war drums against Iran in the Western media are in the nature of psychological warfare against Iranian government officials and non-governmental opinion makers (the reformist camp, advocating appeasement of the West, is the weak link in the country), to which anti-war activists and other well-meaning people can unwittingly contribute.

What we need to be fighting against is, instead, the sanctions, "democracy assistance," covert actions, media propaganda, etc. against Iran, but it's next to impossible to get even activists to do so, let alone the general public. Even the shooting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan don't get people off their asses. Anti-war sentiments in the USA are broadly held but very shallow.

Here's an example. Commenting on the antiwar "work stoppage" on May Day that San Francisco's ILWU Local 10 proposed, for which the rank and file of the rest of the ILWU voted, ILWU spokesman Craig Merilees said:

It's been agreed that on the first of May, the union will exercise its right to hold a meeting on that day. On the day shift, local unions will have the opportunity, if they wish, to take some of that time to speak out against the war if they feel so inclined (emphasis added, qtd. in Matt Smith, "ILWU to Shut Down West Coast Ports on Socialist Holiday,", SF Weekly, 12 March 2008)

If they wish. If they feel so inclined. And that's from the spokesman of one of the most progressive unions here. Feel the temperature of the anti-war opinion in the USA today.

Canadian Imperialism, Eh?

Who can better put a "kinder, gentler" face on the US-led multinational empire than Canadians? After all, their country is the north star of liberal white Americans today, or so I have been told:

Often times, white people get frustrated with the state of their country. They do not like the President, or Congress, or the health care system, or the illegal status of Marijuana. Whenever they are presented with a situation that seems unreasonable to them, their first instinct is to threaten to move to Canada.

For example, if you are watching TV with white people and there is a piece on the news about that they do not agree with, they are likely to declare "ok, that's it, I'm moving to Canada."

Though they will never actually move to Canada, the act of declaring that they are willing to undertake the journey is very symbolic in white culture. It shows that their dedication to their lifestyle and beliefs are so strong, that they would consider packing up their entire lives and moving to a country that is only slightly similar to the one they live in now.

Within white culture, it is agreed upon that if Canada had better weather it would be a perfect place.

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Note: Canadian white people threaten to move to Europe.

Note: Europeans are unable to threaten to move anywhere. ("#75 Threatening to Move to Canada," Stuff White People Like, 24 February 2008)

But it turns out Canadians, no slouches at internal colonialism, aren't very good at overseas imperialism. What does imperialism look like when it's undertaken by nice liberal multiculturalists?

Peter MacKay [Minister of National Defence] claims: "More than 80 per cent of Afghans have access to basic health care today" ("Speaking Notes for Peter MacKay, Minister of National Defence," Government of Canada, 17 Oct. 2007).

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For our research, we were unable to obtain a list of CIDA [Canadian International Development Agency] projects to tell us the specific location of projects in Afghanistan from either CIDA in Canada, or the Canadian embassy in Kabul. We happened to find two CIDA projects in Bamiyan province. Both were artificial insemination projects that appeared to be abandoned, or at best mothballed. These were the only evidence of CIDA projects we saw. At both sites, we found expensive vehicles and construction machinery left scattered about the sites in various stages of disrepair. (emphasis added, Michael Skinner, "Afghanistan: Why Canada Should Withdraw Its Troops," MRZine, 14 March 2008)

If American imperialism is a tragedy, Canadian imperialism is a tragicomedy.

"The One Stable State in the Middle East Is Iran"

"Bhutto Assassinated in Attack on Rally" (Salman Masood and Graham Bowley, New York Times, 28 November 2007). Tariq Ali sums up the endgame of military despotism on which the empire has bet in Pakistan: "In the past, military rule was designed to preserve order -- and did so for a few years. No longer. Today it creates disorder and promotes lawlessness" ("A Tragedy Born of Military Despotism and Anarchy," Guardian, 28 December 2007).

Everyone ought to keep in mind that, "at the moment, the one stable state in the Middle East is Iran," as Immanuel Wallerstein correctly observes.

The basic fact that we should always keep in mind is that the present U.S. administration has a full plate -- maintaining its presence in Iraq, maintaining its presence in Afghanistan, and worrying about the very real possibility of the breakdown of order in Pakistan. Even George W. Bush can appreciate that Iran's possible development of nuclear weapons a decade from now cannot displace these other concerns as a priority.

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In the meantime, every one else around the world is thinking of what they should be doing in the Middle East after 2009, with most probably a Democratic president in office in the United States. It should seem obvious to them all that, at the moment, the one stable state in the Middle East is Iran. Iran to be sure has its internal conflicts and the Ahmadinejad faction may well lose the next elections. But Iran -- an oil power, a Shia power, a military and demographic power in the region -- is a major actor that has to be taken into account. Countries will prefer to have Iran on their side than against them. Iran is not going to go away. (Immanuel Wallerstein, "A Major Reversal? The NIE Report on Iran," MRZine, 25 December 2007)

Among all the factors mentioned above, as well as the unwillingness of Russia, China, Germany, and others to go along with the USA, whose subprime state of economy has finally become exposed, it is "the very real possibility of the breakdown of order in Pakistan" that has most effectively put the brake on Washington's Iran campaign.

The stars are finally aligned all right for a détente with Iran . . . if liberals and leftists in the North push hard for it.

Can we give a détente with America to the Iranian people before contradictions of resource populism in Iran (as well as Venezuela -- watch the governments' responses to inflation in both) become more acute, exacerbate its internal conflicts, and once again raise the eternal hope of the American power elite?

Update

The Russians keep delivering -- the Caspian Summit, nuclear fuels, and now an anti-aircraft system "far superior to . . . the US Patriot system."

Russia is to supply Iran with a new and lethal anti-aircraft system capable of shooting down American or Israeli fighter jets in the event of any strike on Iran's nuclear facilities.

Iran yesterday confirmed that Russia had agreed to deliver the S-300 air defence system, a move that is likely to irk the Bush administration and gives further proof of Russia and Iran's deepening strategic partnership.

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The S-300 had a range far superior to that of the US Patriot system, experts said. It could also shoot down cruise and ballistic missiles, they added.

"It's a formidable system. It really gives a new dimension to Iran's anti-aircraft defences," said one Russian defence expert, who declined to be named.

"It's purely a defensive system. But it's very effective. It's much better than the US system. It has good radar. It can shoot down low-flying cruise missiles, though with some difficulty." (Luke Harding, "Russia Will Supply New Anti-Aircraft Missiles for Iran," Guardian, 27 December 2007)

Update 2

Oh well, now "Russia Denies Talks with Iran on S-300 Deliveries" (RIA Novosti, 28 December 2007).

Lake City Army Ammunition Plant

Estes Thompson reports that "Troops training for and fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are firing more than 1 billion bullets a year, contributing to ammunition shortages hitting police departments nationwide and preventing some officers from training with the weapons they carry on patrol" ("Ammunition Shortage Squeezes Police," Associated Press, 17 August 2007). Anyone who thinks the "War on Terror" has made America safer is an ass.

In the same wire dispatch, by the way, one learns a very intriguing fact:

The Lake City Army Ammunition Plant in Independence, Mo., directly supplies the military with more than 80 percent of its small-arms ammunition. Production at the factory has more than tripled since 2002, rising from roughly 425 million rounds that year to 1.4 billion rounds in 2006, according to the Joint Munitions Command at the Rock Island Arsenal in Illinois.

Most of the rest of the military's small-arms ammunition comes from Falls Church, Va.-based General Dynamics Corp., which relies partly on subcontractors -- some of whom also supply police departments. (emphasis added)

That is a potential chokepoint.

Washington Wants to Label Iran's Revolutionary Guards "Terrorist"

Bad news on the front page of the New York Times: Washington wants to label Iran's Revolutionary Guards "terrorist," signifying its determination to step up sanctions on Iran and to pressure other nations to do the same (Helene Cooper, "U.S. Weighing Terrorist Label for Iran Guards," 15 August 2007). Since Michael Slackman's departure from his Iran assignment, the New York Times' coverage of Iran's domestic affairs has deteriorated drastically, and the paper moreover regularly allows Washington to plant fake news, usually via Michael R. Gordon, supporting its barefaced lies that Tehran is attacking US troops through the Taliban, Iraqi Shi'i militias, and even Iraqi Sunni insurgents (when it's clear to every thinking person that Tehran's main goal is only to have governments in Iraq and Afghanistan that won't allow the Taliban, Sunni guerrillas and terrorists, or Americans to attack Iran and Iranians). But, for once, the New York Times does Iran a visual favor: at the top center of the front page of its national edition today, right next to Helene Cooper's article, is featured a large photo of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hamid Karzai talking to each other, and they are pictured as if they were saying: "Did you hear the incredibly stupid shit that America just said?"

The Afghan War as a "Loss Leader"

The China National Offshore Oil Corporation's $18.5-billion bid has put Unocal back into headlines, a company whose pipeline politics, many suspected, may have been behind Washington's Afghan War.

Certainly, the official story of hunting down terrorists in Afghanistan made no sense. Why expect Osama bin Laden or any other high-ranking member of Al Qaeda to sit and wait until US troops arrive nearly a month after the 9/11 terrorist attacks? Any intelligent leader of a clandestine organization would have left the country long before October 7, 2001, the beginning of the US invasion. Apparent irrationality of the Afghan War, in terms of effectively fighting terrorists, fueled the suspicion. However, if Washington had been after pipelines in Afghanistan, the last thing it should have done was to attack the country, destroying what little stability its weak state had maintained. So, the idea of a pipeline war doesn't make sense either.

If neither pipelines nor bin Laden was the point of the Afghan War, what was?

The invasion was, first and foremost, Washington's reassertion of power and prestige, necessary because the 9/11 attacks put big holes in them, showing that even the Pentagon itself -- the headquarters of the biggest military in the world -- was not invulnerable to attacks. Afghanistan was simply the most convenient target among all countries -- reportedly about sixty -- in which Al Qaeda was said to have its cells. It was poor, it was diplomatically isolated, it was politically fragmented, and its military force was weak. What better country to invade?

Besides, the main prize that the George W. Bush administration was after was not Afghanistan but Iraq. By now, we know that "barely five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq -- even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks" ("Plans for Iraq Attack Began on 9/11," CBS, 4 Sep. 2002). Therefore, it is best to regard the Afghan War as a "loss leader" in marketing terms, a grand opening sale to draw American suckers into Washington's supermarket of wars.

Moreover, warriors do not need to seize any resource such as fossil fuels to make war economically productive. War itself is a big industry, a very profitable enterprise for friends of a war-making government. Even NGOs, which are ostensibly non-profit and humanitarian, can get a piece of action, too, after the target country's government crumbles. Fat grants to pay for their directors' salaries and aid workers' wages make them addicted to disasters.

Destruction and construction are both big businesses -- sharp arrows, along with big tax cuts for the rich and bubble-inducing low interest rates, in the quiver of an empire in deflationary times. Remember the fear of deflation before the sharp rise in oil prices (cf. Kenneth Rogoff, "Escape from Global Deflation: A Commentary," Nihon Keizai Shimbun, July 17, 2003; and Matthew Davis, "Fighting Deflation in the U.S. and Japan," NBER, 29 Jun. 2005)?

The best war of all in the history of the United States, from the point of view of the power elite, must be the Gulf War, as allies like Japan and Saudi Arabia practically financed the whole venture and US casualties (not counting the victims of the Gulf War syndrome) were very low. Riyadh and Tokyo's refusal to loosen purse strings for the ongoing Iraq War, forcing US taxpayers to foot the bill, may have done as much damage to Washington's prospect of winning the war as guerrillas and terrorists in Iraq.

Considering all this, I'd say, block the Unocal deal. Beijing, one of the largest customers of US government bonds, might get motivated to dump the dollar, monkey-wrenching war finance.

A New Opium War

If you look at the changes in the political economy of Afghanistan, you may conclude that this is neither a "war on terror" that Washington says it is nor a pipeline war as some of its critics allege. It looks as if it is the latest Opium War, regardless of intentions of all parties (Afghans, Americans, Europeans, and others) involved.

According to the Afghanistan Opium Survey 2004 by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), opium cultivation has increased 64% since 2003. The opium industry now employs 2.3 million in Afghanistan (compared to 1.7 million in 2003), i.e., 10% of the Afghan population. The export value of Afghan opium is estimated to be $2.8 billion, a 22% increase since 2003. The opium export today accounts for more than 60% of Afghanistan's Gross Domestic Product.

Afghan farmers are not getting richer, though. The average farm price that fresh opium commands is only $92/kg in 2004, a decline of 67% since 2003, when fresh opium fetched $283/kg. Much of the profits goes to traffickers, who capture 78% of the opium export value: $2.2 billion (a 69% increase over $1.3 billion that went to traffickers in 2003). In contrast, opium farmers received only the total of $0.6 billion, a 41% decline compared to what they managed to get in 2003; each opium farming family's yearly income is now about $1,700 ($260 per capita), 56% lower than in 2003, when it was $3,900 ($600 per capita). Still it beats growing wheat: even though "bad weather and disease lowered the 2004 opium yield per hectare by almost 30 per cent" (United Nations Information Service, "United Nations Drugs Office Reports Major Increase in Opium Cultivation in Afghanistan," November 18, 2004), making opium production less productive and profitable than last year, the gross income from opium per hectare is $4,600, more than ten times the gross income from wheat per hectare of $390.

Eric Schmitt of the New York Times reports that "a new confidential American military assessment" by Lt. Gen. David W. Barno, the top American commander in Afghanistan, expects that "[p]oppy cultivation and opium production will continue to increase in Afghanistan, expanding the dangerous influence of drug lords at all levels of the government of President Hamid Karzai" ("Afghans' Gains Face Big Threat in Drug Traffic," December 11, 2004).

Afghanistan was not always the world's largest producer of opium. The first turning point was Washington's support for Afghan mujahideen fighting against the Soviet Union. Before the American intervention, Afghanistan had an economy largely based upon subsistence agriculture: "As late as 1972, economists estimated that the cash economy constituted slightly less than half of the total" (Barnett Rubin, "The Political Economy of War and Peace in Afghanistan," 1999). The war against the Soviets and Afghan Communists changed it. The mujahideen commanders -- a new elite whose rise in Afghanistan was underwritten by US, Pakistani, and Saudi monies -- "pressured the peasants to grow opium, a cash crop they could tax. It was also during this period that the production of opium started to increase" (Rubin, 1999).

The US intervention in Afghanistan was a chapter in the long history of opium and empire. Sugar, tea, coffee, tobacco, and opium -- "[t]hese first truly mass-produced, mass-marketed global commodities rearranged fundamental relations of power and authority all along the trajectories of their production, movement, and consumption" (James L. Hevia, "Opium, Empire, and Modern History," China Review International 10.2, Fall 2003, p. 312), fueling the growth of capitalism and the expansion of the British Empire:

By the early part of the nineteenth century, British Indian opium had stanched the flow of New World silver into China, replacing silver as the commodity that could be exchanged for Chinese tea and other goods. By the 1830s, silver was flowing out of China to India and beyond. As opium imports in China steadily increased, the political and economic results in India, Britain, and the greater empire were profound. . . . [T]ea and sugar duties helped to pay for the Royal Navy’s upkeep and development.20 Opium revenues in India not only kept the colonial administration afloat, but sent vast quantities of silver bullion back to Britain. The upshot was the global dominance of the British pound sterling until World War I.

In this respect, the figures compiled by John Richards in his study of opium revenue in India ["The Opium Industry in British India," The Indian Economic and Social History Review 39.2-3, 2002, pp.149–180] are instructive.21 Managed through the East India Company monopoly, opium, by 1839, accounted for around 11 percent of the total revenue of the British establishment in India, a figure that held for the next decade. After 1850, the opium produced 16–17 percent of revenues, peaking at 100 plus million rupees (10 million pounds sterling) annually by the early 1880s. Over this period of time, opium revenues equaled around 42 percent of the land tax, the other main source of monies of the British Raj. Although there was a drop-off after 1890, opium still generated around 8 percent of total revenue for the next two decades at an average of about 75 million rupees annually. The direct revenue generated by opium in India was supplemented by the inflow of silver from sales of the drug in China. In 1839, the figure was 22.6 million rupees, and it steadily increased to around 41 million rupees per year on average in the decade from 1865 to 1875. There was a reduction afterwards, but around 22 million rupees per year still entered India through the mid-1890s. In addition to these monies, there was also a movement of silver bullion from the British trading firms in China, such as Jardine and Matheson, to London banks.

As Carl Trocki has argued, and Richards' data supports, without opium the British global empire is virtually unimaginable. (Hevia, p. 313)

Today, it is said that the global illicit drug trade involves "US$500 billion annually of which US$300 billion is laundered" (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, "Money Laundering"). That's about 5% of the GDP of the United States ($10.99 trillion), but don't think it's chump change. Consider this: the cost of the US war on Iraq is $150 billion (and counting). Imagine how many insurgencies and counter-insurgencies (using narco dollars in the name of fighting against "narco terrorists") $500 billion can buy, given that military and paramilitary soldiers' labor power in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East is incomparably cheaper than US soldiers'.

"Nervos belli, pecuniam infinitam [The sinews of war, unlimited money]." -- Cicero, "Phillipic against Marc Anthony," V.ii.5