With Afghanistan continuing to bear the brunt of Operation Enduring Freedom, its lucrative heroin production, observers say, will likely be transferred to another nation known for its international criminal activity – South Africa.
Although South Africa’s government and the Taliban regime of Afghanistan may be worlds apart in the geographical sense, they have become increasingly linked in recent years.
As WorldNetDaily has reported, Osama bin Laden has used South Africa as one of his key overseas bases and has spent a large sum of cash translating the Koran into the Zulu language. And now, a de facto connecting point between the two nations may be evolving via the complicated, fluid and ever-changing web of the international drug trade.
“Over 90 percent of the heroin consumed in the West comes from Afghanistan, but South Africa is ready to join in,” Dutch journalist Adriana Stuijt told WorldNetDaily.
Stuijt, a former anti-apartheid crusader, is deeply interested in the changing dynamics of the global drug trade. She runs a website that tracks and analyzes the murders of white South African farmers.
“Afghanistan is a major opium-poppy producer, and there can be no doubt production is being interfered with by the Allied bombing campaign in the ongoing war against terrorism,” said South African Koos Van der Merve.
A former military intelligence officer, Van der Merve served in South Africa’s war in Angola against Cuba and the former Soviet Union. He served under the Christian, anti-communist, pro-West government until 1994.
Since the main source of heroin, namely Afghanistan, is being destroyed by all accounts, which nations will take up the slack and continue to provide the world with a stable source of the drug?
“From Burma to Laos, from Syria to Lebanon, from Columbia to Mexico, the drug trade is flourishing,” said Van der Merve. “There is money laundering of drug money going on in several key spots on Earth, like Cyprus and the Pacific island of Nauru. And now South Africa has entered the transnational drug trade as a major player. I believe that the heroin production of Afghanistan is going to be transferred to South Africa in the near future.”
Recently, poppy-seeding activities have been discovered on eight South African farms – but are they drug-grade poppies or merely floral poppies? The South African police are investigating.
South African policeman Paddy Mazibuko told Stuijt that he has recently been alerted to “extensive poppy seed beds on seven newly purchased fruit farms.”
Mazibuko says he contacted American authorities rather than officials of the African National Congress for fear of a cover-up.
“The official ANC-government security networks clearly are infiltrated with many corrupt officials,” he said. “The same applies to the Interpol people in South Africa, who should be treated with similar caution. I believe that certain international policing authorities in Europe have also been asked to test these seeds to find out their origin and whether they are actually drug-grade poppies.”
The international drug trade is an intricate web of alliances and agendas, a kaleidoscope of issues that requires more than a rudimentary knowledge of geography, history, politics and religion. The demand for drugs in the East and West, coupled with the amazingly inflated prices that global narcotics prohibition causes, play directly into the hands of insurgents and terrorists in need of astronomical amounts of cash.
These insurgents and crime lords, like the Taliban, Wa State Army of Burma, Hezbollah and Syria in the Bekka Valley, and the Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army, fund their efforts as narco-conduits.
From the Russian connection to laundering in Cyprus to the tiny Pacific island of Nauru, there are countless examples worldwide that show just how pervasive and influential the drug trade is.
Nauru launders at least $1 billion annually in drug money, according to some sources. Interestingly, Nauru, with a population of less than 12,000, is a member of the United Nations.
The Burmese junta turned down a an offer from the United Nations of $1 billion in return for handing over the reins of that troubled government to U.N. authorities. This amazing and bold bit of realpolitik was widely reported in prominent Asian newspapers but was largely ignored in the West.
It is South Africa, however, that has emerged as a major connecting point in the international drug trade on several levels. Why would South Africa be a good choice for the cultivation of heroin and as a mecca for the transnational drug trade?
Van der Merve says there are several important reasons:
South Africa has the climate, soil and weather to grow not only heroin, but other drug crops, like marijuana.
- South Africa is the most developed country in all of Africa. It has the road, rail, air and sea links to transport drugs around the world.
- South Africa has a first-world financial system, with banks and a stock exchange that can be readily used to launder drug money.
“South Africa is the most logical choice for the drug cartels,” Van der Merve said. “Other drug-producing states like Colombia, Burma, Laos, Syria, Lebanon and Afghanistan cannot begin to match South Africa’s transportation and financial infrastructure.”
Stuijt echoed Van der Merve’s analysis.
“I think there will no longer be poppy fields in Afghanistan,” she said. “I think that is going to end just like the poppy fields are being ended by China in the Golden Triangle. They have found a much better new killing field with built-in harbors at the key point of the world in southern Africa. China is already investing heavily in the harbors of South Africa and is building a brand new container harbor infrastructure. The (ANC) regime there is perfect for the drug trade. … No one cares what is happening in Africa. And who is buying up all the farms after the whites are driven off of them in South Africa? It’s the Pakistanis.”
Asked why Russia and China would voluntarily shut down the heroin cultivation in Afghanistan and the Golden Triangle, Stuijt said, “The drug trade interferes with the development of normal trade relations. … Africa makes perfect sense for both nations.”
Adds Van der Merve, “The transnational drug trade is already largely dependent upon a corrupt South Africa, so Stuijt’s premise is not only plausible, but probably, at this stage, inevitable. To sum up the changing world order of the drug trade you would have to say that China and Russia will run the drug trade out of South Africa, with the help of some key players in the Islamic world and South Africa’s corrupt Marxist regime. Who are the losers? Well, the white South African farmers and the poppy farmers in Afghanistan, Burma and Laos are the biggest losers in this mad game.”
A State Department official on the Africa desk contacted by WorldNetDaily said that he was not familiar with any heroin production in South Africa but did not discount South Africa as a possible location in the future for heroin cultivation if the flow of the drug was impeded in Afghanistan.
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Tim Graham