Afghanistan way in the future, how can the peopole of afghanistan defeet the demon of drug agriculture? In the new political landscape of Afghanistan, US and Australian forces, aligned against the Taliban and their terrorist allies, find themselves in an uneasy relationship with the drug lords who control much of the world's opium cultivation and heroin production. Afghanistan and its near neighbours still supply around 80 percent of the heroin sold in Western Europe.
View Afghanistan drugs guns and money. Video hosted on Google. After a brief lull in production in the last year of the Taliban, the current opium crop is one of the largest ever and business is booming. How are the world's drug control authorities responding to this fact of life in Central Asia? Can the reconstruction effort in Afghanistan take the place of the opium trade currently the mainstay of the economy? How will the United States resolve a dilemma that pits the war on terror against the war on drugs?
Narrated by Colin Friels and produced by Chris Hilton, Afghanistan: Drugs, Guns and Money asks these difficult questions by following the journey of this years opium crops, tracing the drug trafficking routes heading north from Afghanistan through the nations of the Old Silk Road on its way to Europe. The film examines who are the winners and losers as the crop finds its way to market. The awesome beauty of the landscape provides a powerful backdrop for the treachery uncovered each step of the way. Like a cancer, the heroin trade has spread its tentacles through almost every level of society. In Afghanistan there is mass local addiction, local HIV epidemics, an unending cycle of violence and crime, and the corruption of state institutions.
The documentary begins late April 2002 in the blooming poppy fields of Badakstan in northern Afghanistan then follows the shipment of the harvest to the hidden heroin laboratories, across the Pianj river, by foot through treacherous mountain passes in Tajikistan and then by road, rail and air through the Silk Road nations of Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan and then its journey to the most profitable market in Europe.
On route we meet the impoverished farmers (Sayed Ahmad), the compromised border guards (Colonel Vladimir Makushin and the Russian border guard), drug agents (General Rustan Nazarov), traffickers (Boris Petrovicjh and Zharina), corrupt customs officers (name withheld), and the regions top UN drug control official (Antonella Deledda). The story also includes comments from Robert Baer, ex-CIA agent from Tajikistan who is critical of US policy in the area.
The documentary returns to Afghanistan to see what can be done about reducing the production of opium and heroin at source. During the Talibans reign, the regime taxed poppy production to fund their activities, later banning it in an attempt to gain good PR points from the West while profiting from the huge stockpiles. But there are no good guys in this story. In those parts of the country controlled by the Northern Alliance, heroin labs continue unhindered and production thrives. They still do. Americas response to this point has been to waive narcotics sanctions against Afghanistan now it has a friendly leader in place in Kabul. But its a thorn in the side of the new Afghan government of Hamid Karzai, enriching the regional warlords and inhibiting the project of rebuilding the nation. Karzais new vice president Abdul Qadir who is interviewed in the film was assassinated in Kabul in broad daylight in July this year. Many suspect his death was drug related.
A classic documentary set in a stunning landscape, Afghanistan: Drugs, Guns and Money is an unblinking look at a story of treachery, corruption and the most unholy of alliancesthe outcome of which may have dire consequences for all of us.
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