We are in Afghanistan for the Drugs... nothing else.

April 25, 2006
Wayne Madsen

Yesterday, an Antonov AN-32 Russian-built passenger/cargo plane crashed at Bost airport in Lashkar Gah, the capital of southern Helmand province in Afghanistan. Two of the four Ukrainian crew, including the pilot, were killed. Yet, miraculously, all thirteen passengers, eleven Americans and two whose nationalities were withheld, survived the crash. Three Afghans on the ground were killed, including two young girls, two and three years old) and another five were missing. Helmand is known as a center for Taliban activity, bumper heroin production, and links to Afghanistan's American viceroy Hamid Karzai (Karzai's brother owns a restaurant in Baltimore called "Helmand'). The Russian plane was said to be on a counter-narcotics operation when a civilian truck pulled on to the runway as the plane was landing, which resulted in the crash. As WMR has been reporting, Porter Goss' CIA has been restoring its old drug routes in Latin America and South Asia. The Russian plane was leased by the State Department's Bureau of Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. The interesting element is that the major leaser of such aircraft in Afghanistan with Ukrainian crews is notorious arm smuggler Viktor Bout. Bout has leased his aircraft to the United States in such regions as Afghanistan, Iraq, and Sudan. Bout also flew for the Taliban before the U.S. invasion. Bout is also linked to Russian-Israeli-Ukrainian Mafia kingpins in the drug smuggling business. The Bush administration and Porter Goss's CIA are keeping some interesting bedfellows in the so-called "War on Drugs."