AFGHANISTAN: WORLD'S FIRST NARCO-TERRORIST STATE

"For all the billions spent and lives lost, there is little to show, and most of that will not long survive our departure." -ex-CIA officer Robert Grenier-

Having spent almost three years of my life in Afghanistan, one year as a Special Agent for Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) and two years as a Senior Law Enforcement Advisor Contractor assigned to the Department of Justice (DOJ) Kabul Country Legal Attache office for Anti-Corruption and Counter Narcotics, I would like to give you my professional analysis from a Rule of Law perspective in setting the record straight on how Afghanistan turned into the World's first narco-terrorist state. The findings put out by the government the Biden Report on Afghanistan ¹ and the SIGAR reports do not tell the complete story in Afghanistan. ² ³ ⁴

The best way to lay this out is beginning at the origins of how Presidential Decisions sealed the fate of Afghanistan. By laying out the decisions made by each President so the American public can decide for themselves and reach their own conclusions as to the merit or truth of how Afghanistan became the World's first Narco-Terrorist state.

PRESIDENT BUSH DECISIONS

December 9, 2001, the End of the Taliban Regime, The Taliban surrendered Kandahar, and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar fled the city into the mountains of Afghanistan and later to Pakistan. 

In March 2002, President Bush shifted military and intelligence resources away from Afghanistan in the direction of Saddam Hussein's Iraq as a chief U.S. threat in the "war on terror." 

In May 2003, The Bush Administration declared the end of primary combat operations in Afghanistan in May 2003.

President Bush decision to take away critical Military (Special Forces) resources from Afghanistan and send the assets to Iraq at a time the Taliban had abandoned Afghanistan and fled to Pakistan allowed the Taliban Senior Leadership the time they needed to regroup and reconstitute its insurgency, which later came back to haunt the U.S. with a vengeance in 2006. Afghanistan expert Seth G. Jones and other experts blames a faltering central government for the spike in attacks. “As with most insurgencies, the critical precondition [to the Afghan insurgency] is the collapse of governance.” ⁵

PRESIDENT OBAMA DECISIONS

January 2011

President Obama changes the focus of U.S. anti-corruption policy. The new anti-corruption strategy for Afghanistan stated that the U.S. government wouldn't aggressively pursue top Afghan officials suspected of malfeasance because "limited judicial capacity and political interference" from President Karzai's government made prosecuting them unlikely.

This change in policy led to the failure to hold the Afghans accountable in addressing high level Afghan governmental corruption and was one of the principal reasons the Afghan population distrusted the central government and sympathizes with the Taliban that led to the debacle in Afghanistan.

Astonishingly, the U.S. decision-makers – State Department and White House officials – knew the extent of Afghan government corruption as exemplified by the Kabul Bank scandal, the World's largest bank fraud, but scaled back efforts against it. Moreover, by changing the focus of U.S. anti-corruption policy in 2011, the Obama administration signaled to the Afghan government that the U.S. was giving tacit approval for corruption. ⁶ ⁷ ⁸

June 22, 2011

President Obama has ordered the U.S. military to withdraw 10,000 troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year and pull out another 23,000 by the summer of 2012, part of what he called "the beginning, but not the end, of our effort to wind down this war." "After this initial reduction, our troops will continue coming home at a steady pace as Afghan security forces move into the lead," Obama said in a primetime address to the nation from the East Room of the White House. " By 2014, this process of transition will be complete, and the Afghan people will be responsible for their own security." ⁹

May 27, 2014

President Obama announces a timetable for withdrawing most U.S. forces from Afghanistan by the end of 2016. The first phase of his plan calls for 9,800 U.S. troops to remain after the combat mission concludes at the end of 2014, limited to training Afghan forces and conducting operations against “the remnants of al-Qaeda.” Obama says the drawdown will free resources for counterterrorism priorities elsewhere. ¹⁰

This decision by President Obama arguably sealed the fate of Afghanistan as the decision signaled to the Taliban that they were winning and to the Afghan government and public that they were being abandon by the U.S. ¹¹

2012

The Obama Administration changed its counter-narcotic strategy for Afghanistan, envisioning two simultaneous and parallel transfers of responsibility – transferring security to Afghan armed forces and transferring counter-narcotics to the Afghan government.¹²

Operation Reciprocity was a DEA/DOJ investigation of the Taliban Senior Leadership (TSL) and the major heads of the Afghan Drug Trafficking Organizations (DTOs).

Its goal was disrupting and breaking the drug-terror nexus to significantly weakening the Taliban before a significant drawdown in forces, including DEA personnel, would take effect.

The Taliban had achieved integration as a narco-terrorist cartel that not only provided protection to Afghan DTOs but was also involved in lab operations that processed heroin, while integrating itself with criminal groups and corrupt Afghan politicians. DEA investigation documented that the Taliban had become the world’s largest drug trafficking organization for opium, heroin, and hashish. ¹³

On May 27, 2013, DEA and DOJ received instructions from the State Department to cease all investigative and prosecution efforts against the Taliban Senior Leadership. ¹⁴

The decision by the Obama administration to halt the DEA investigative efforts ensured that the DEA lost the ability to gather the necessary corroborating evidence to obtain a U.S. indictment of the Taliban Senior Leadership and the major DTOs they conspired with and paved the way for Afghanistan becoming the World’s first narco-terrorist state. ¹⁵ ¹⁶

Had the TSL been indicted, DEA and the world’s law enforcement community would have had eight years to investigative, indict, arrest and convict the TSL which would have exposed the Taliban as a criminal organization trafficking in illegal drugs and degraded their military capabilities and messaging as an Islamic freedom organization fighting to free Afghanistan from the Infidels.

Obama 2011, decision of a significant drawdown in forces including DEA personnel by 2014, adversely impacted U.S. counter narcotics efforts in Afghanistan as it left little time in achieving many counter narcotics U.S. policy goals and objectives, specifically addressing the threat that the Taliban posed to Afghanistan. ¹⁷ ¹⁸ ¹⁹ ²⁰ ²¹

DECISIONS BY THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION ON THE WAR ON TERROR

Since 9-11, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has been a leader in the United States (U.S.) world -wide war on terrorism. This was exemplified by two of the most significant DEA narco-terrorist investigations ever conducted, “Project Cassandra” and “Operation Reciprocity” that the American public probably never heard of as both investigations were derailed by the Obama administration for political purposes and vaguely reported by media.

Project Cassandra was an investigation of the Iranian-sponsored narco-terrorist group Hezbollah who became a major player in the trafficking of cocaine into the United States. Hezbollah has infiltrated criminal gangs in South America and set up its own billion-dollar international criminal enterprise to finance its terror activities.

The DEA investigative efforts to take down the Hezbollah network, never happened and Hezbollah was allowed to continue drug-running into the U.S., in order to avoid upsetting the Iran nuclear deal. ²² ²³

[Note: The million-dollar question: Why no one in elected office or the U.S. media asked the Obama administration why President Obama stopped the two most significant narco-terrorist investigations in U.S. history while the U.S. was engaged in a war on terrorism?]

PRESIDENT TRUMP DECISIONS

August 21, 2017

President Trump outlines his Afghanistan policy in an address to troops in Arlington, Virginia, saying that though his "original instinct was to pull out," he will instead press ahead with an open-ended military commitment to prevent the emergence of "a vacuum for terrorists." Differentiating his policy from Obama's, Trump says decisions about withdrawal will be based on "conditions on the ground" rather than arbitrary timelines. ²⁴

During the Trump administration negotiations with the Taliban there were no discussions or pre-conditions to end the Taliban’s involvement in the illegal drug trade. ²⁵

PRESIDENT BIDEN DECISIONS

APRIL 2021

Biden makes the decision to order all American troops out of Afghanistan by 11 September - the 20-year anniversary of the terror attacks that triggered the US invasion.

The report by the SIGAR found the withdrawal announced by President Biden in April of that year “destroyed the morale of Afghan soldiers and police” who had “long relied on the US military’s presence” for their own protection — as well as to ensure the Kabul government paid their salaries.

AUGUST 2021

The US withdrawal from the country opened a clear path for the Taliban to take on and defeat the Afghan security forces. Many major cities fell with little to no resistance. ²⁶ ²⁷ ²⁸

AUGUST 26, 2021

Suicide attack at Kabul airport during evacuations kills 13 U.S. service members and 170 Afghans. ²⁹

Top military leaders said that they had recommended to President Joe Biden that the U.S. keep 2,500 troops in Afghanistan even after the Aug. 31 withdrawal deadline, contradicting the president's assertion last month that his advisers did not tell him to leave a small military presence in the country. ³⁰

According to Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan “(Biden) thought the Afghan national security forces could step up and fight because we spent 20 years, tens of billions of dollars training them, giving them the best equipment, giving them support of US forces for 20 years and when push came to shove, they decided not to step up and fight for their country,” Biden blamed Afghan armed forces for folding in the face of the lightning Taliban advance. ³¹

According to a Pentagon Watchdog over 7 billion in US military equipment was seized by the Taliban.

The bulk of the outlay, the watchdog said, was for tactical ground vehicles like Humvees and mine-resistant MRAPs — about $4.12 billions of which was in the Afghan military’s inventory when the Taliban swept into Kabul on Aug. 15, 2021.

The report also noted that the lost materiel included $923.3 million worth of military aircraft, “some of which were demilitarized and rendered inoperable during the evacuation,” and $294.6 million in aircraft munitions. ³²

“It is a stain on our nation’s integrity and honor that even just a few months ago, we were not meeting our obligation to the men and women, our Afghan allies who served alongside us,” Jake Wood, a former US Marine and Afghan war veteran told CNN. The Biden Administration's retreat will leave a stain on the reputation of the United States." Biden acknowledges that some U.S. citizens had been left behind in Afghanistan, estimating “about 100 to 200 Americans remain in Afghanistan. ³³ ³⁴

October 9, 2022

Biden decision to release convicted Afghan drug trafficker and prominent Taliban ally, Bashir Noorzai in exchanged for the Taliban release of American hostage Mark Frerichs—a navy veteran who has been held by the Taliban since 2020. Noorzai is called the “Pablo Escobar of Afghanistan,” Noorzai is a notorious drug lord from the southern Afghan province of Kandahar. He was the earliest financier of the Taliban in the 1990s, fueling the group’s insurgency with funds from his illicit narcotic trades. ³⁵

However, the withdrawal decision by President Biden from Afghanistan stands on its own merit, abandoning the Afghan people to the whims of the Taliban will forever stain America's character.

For 20 years, under U.S. and International efforts, Afghan women were allowed to attend schools and follow their dreams of becoming productive members of Afghan society. Instead, our legacy in Afghanistan by abandoning women to the Taliban makes a mockery of U.S. policies and efforts of standing up for the rights of women where Afghan women are now beaten into submission in following the Taliban's version of Islamic law and are now considered property with little to no rights.

LESSONS LEARNED: WHY THE RULE OF LAW APPROACH FAILED IN AFGHANISTAN

In SIGAR's final report they left out two critical factors, one being the effects of conflicting U.S. counter-narcotic, counter-corruption, and counter-terrorism policies and the other being the failure of every Presidential Administration involved in the Afghanistan adventure from Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden by ignoring the warnings as to the threat posed by the Taliban’s involvement in the Afghan Drug War, and the pervasive corruption within the Afghan government to the Afghan state. These two issues would play a part in Afghanistan becoming a narco-terrorist state ruled by the Taliban. ³⁶ ³⁷

CONFLICTING U.S. POLICIES

Our involvement in Afghanistan illustrates how the War on Drugs and Corruption has collided with the War on Terrorism. Narcotic trafficking, the Taliban insurgency, and Afghan government corruption often intersect, and U.S. counter-narcotic, counter-corruption, and counter-terrorism policies often conflict. These conflicting policies contributed significantly to the loss of U.S. efforts in Afghanistan.

After the attacks of 9/11, the U.S. attempted to bring all the available resources of its military, intelligence, diplomatic, and law enforcement agencies to bear on the terrorists. However, combining their efforts didn't achieve the type of synergy envisioned because they operated under different guidelines in evidence and intelligence collection, often resulting in a disjointed and confusing U.S. policy in Afghanistan.

The Military and intelligence agencies viewed counter-narcotics, counter-corruption, and counterinsurgency through separate lenses and approached each differently. The Military was fighting a war with the Taliban and Al Qaeda, not drug traffickers. The Rule of Law approached failed in Afghanistan due to successive U.S. administrations from the Bush-Obama-Trump-Biden administrations to recognize the Afghan Drug War and Corruption as the shared commonality that contributed to Afghanistan becoming the World's first Narco-Terrorist nation.

The Military and Intelligence agencies obtained information on terrorists from corrupt Afghan officials, militia leaders, and narcotic traffickers but operated under entirely different rules of engagement from U.S. law enforcement. As a result, DEA focused on narcotics and corruption with an emphasis on weakening the Taliban’s drug-terrorist nexus.

Throughout the war, the Military and Diplomatic community (U.S. Embassy, State Department) held varying views of the importance of counter-drugs and counter-corruption related to the overall operational strategy to defeat the Taliban. Initially, the Embassy and Military viewed DEA Rule of Law efforts as integral to achieving allied goals and objectives in Afghanistan, and at other times they were seen as separate and distinct from the war effort, more "mission creep" than anything else.

From time to time, some in the Military even viewed going after narcotics and corruption as counter-productive to the overall effort, fearing that it would alienate the Afghan government on the corruption side and elements of the Afghan population involved in the drug trade on the narcotics side. Complicating matters even more, some military field commanders held differing views and approaches to counter-narcotics and counter-corruption at the same time rather than following an overall operational strategy defined by the ISAF command in Kabul.

Sadly, DEA lost three agents and the U.S. squandered the lives of thousands of U.S and coalition troops, as well as Afghan security personnel and civilians. Today Afghanistan is controlled by the Taliban. The American public needs to see the tremendous efforts and sacrifices of the U.S. and ISAF military personnel, along with DEA and certain far-sighted State Department Ambassadors and diplomats who served in Afghanistan, went above and beyond the call of duty to get the job done in spite of the obstacles.

They didn’t fail in their efforts. They were betrayed by their Commanders-in-Chiefs.

References and Citations

1. Biden Is Still Covering Up His Deadly Afghan Withdrawal (thefederalist.com)

2. https://www.sigar.mil/interactive-reports/counternarcotics/index.html

3. US government watchdog explains what America did wrong in Afghanistan (taskandpurpose.com)

4. https://www.businessinsider.com/sigar-chief-us-war-on-drugs-afghanistan-a-total-failure-2019-12

5. Timeline: The U.S. War in Afghanistan (cfr.org)

6. Warren P. Strobel and Marisa Taylor. "U.S. Won't Pursue Karzai Allies in Anti-Corruption Campaign." McClatchy Newspapers, January 6, 2011.

7. Matthew Rosenberg and Graham Bowley, "Intractable Afghan Graft Hampering U.S. Strategy," New York Times, March 7, 2012.

8. Kenneth Katzman, Specialist in Middle Eastern Affairs. "Afghanistan: Politics, Elections, and Government Performance." The Congressional Research Service, June 5, 2012

9. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/president-obama-orders-start-us-troop-withdrawal-afghanistan/story?id=13908291

10. Timeline: The U.S. War in Afghanistan (cfr.org)

11. Sib Kaifee. “Taliban leader Mullah Omar vowed to take Kabul within a week of U.S. pullout.” Fox news. June 20, 2013.

12. William F. Wechsler, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Counter Narcotics and Global Threats. 2012, U.S. Senate Testimony

13. The secret story of how America lost the drug war with the Taliban - POLITICO

14. https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2018/07/10/report-obama-admin-shelved-plan-prosecute-taliban-heroin-traffickers/

15. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/17/taliban-narco-state-afghanistan/

16. Cal Thomas: Afghanistan's horrors will spread. Does Team Biden have a grip on reality? | Fox News

17. Mark Checchia and Katerina Oksarsson. “Opium Poppies & Security in Afghanistan.” Congressional Research Service. July 2012

18. When Bowe Bergdahl got in the Way of DEA in Afghanistan - The DENISE SIMON EXPERIENCE (founderscode.com)

19. Lisa Curtis, Senior Research Fellow, Asian Studies Center "U.S. Counter Narcotic Policy: Essential to fighting Terrorism in Afghanistan." The Heritage Organization. September 30, 2013.

20. Afghanistan: drug trafficking and the 2014 transition / Liana Rosen, Kenneth Katzman - Penn State University Libraries Catalog (psu.edu)

21. Kenneth Katzman, Specialist in Middle Eastern Affairs. "Afghanistan: Post-Taliban governance, security, and U.S. policy." Congressional Research Service. April 15, 2016.

22. https://legalinsurrection.com/2018/07/how-obama-admin-subverted-plan-to-take-down-taliban-drug-running-just-like-it-shut-down-operation-against-hezbollah/

23. https://www.politico.com/interactives/2017/obama-hezbollah-drug-trafficking-investigation/

24. Full Transcript and Video: Trump’s Speech on Afghanistan - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

25. Timeline of terror: How Biden's Afghanistan withdrawal disaster unfolded | Washington Examiner

26. Joe Biden's botched Afghanistan exit is a disaster at home and abroad long in the making | CNN Politics

27. Biden administration struggles to project order as Taliban surrounds Kabul | CNN Politics

28. CIA warned of rapid Afghanistan collapse. So why did U.S. get it so wrong? (nbcnews.com)

29. Timeline of terror: How Biden's Afghanistan withdrawal disaster unfolded | Washington Examiner

30. Contradicting Biden, top generals say they recommended a small force stay in Afghanistan (nbcnews.com)

31. https://thefederalist.com/2023/04/13/bidens-alternative-afghanistan-history-needs-a-reality-check/

32. More than $7B in US military equipment seized by Taliban: Pentagon watchdog (nypost.com)

33. Biden defends 'messy' US pull-out from Afghanistan - BBC News

34. Joe Biden's botched Afghanistan exit is a disaster at home and abroad long in the making | CNN Politics

35. Why America Released Bashir Noorzai, the ‘Pablo Escobar of Afghanistan’ (thedailybeast.com)

36. Lisa Curtis, Senior Research Fellow, Asian Studies Center "U.S. Counter Narcotic Policy: Essential to fighting Terrorism in Afghanistan." The Heritage Organization. September 30, 2013.

37. Kenneth Katzman, Specialist in Middle Eastern Affairs. "Afghanistan: Post-Taliban governance, security, and U.S. policy." Congressional Research Service. April 15, 2016.

[Note: This analysis was created by a former Retired DEA Supervisory Special Agent John Seaman with over 30 years’ experience conducting complex conspiracy investigations. Seaman is the co-author of an article Taliban Include Heroin Kingpins in Leadership - by Gretchen Peters and John Seaman - SpyTalk and author of Ideology and Political Correctness Trump Reality and reference in article The secret story of how America lost the drug war with the Taliban - POLITICOPOLITICO]