Kurt Nimmo Infowars.com March 2, 2010 According to the CIA’s favorite newspaper, The Washington Post, a lot of money is leaving Afghanistan and it is confounding U.S. officials. “The cash, estimated to total well over $1 billion a year, flows mostly to the Persian Gulf emirate of Dubai,” reports the newspaper. “The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, for its part, is trying to figure out whether some of the money comes from Afghanistan’s thriving opium trade.” Some of the money? Afghanistan is the largest producer of opium in the world. A whopping 93% of all the opiates in the world originate in Afghanistan. The Taliban banned opium cultivation after they were installed by the CIA and Pakistan’s ISI intelligence service. Since the defeat of the Taliban in response to their intransigence and lack of business savvy, opium production has skyrocketed. Before the CIA’s covert war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, the country produced zero percent of the world’s opium. During this covert war instigated at the highest levels of the U.S. government, the CIA-supported Mujahedeen rebels (later known popularly known as al-Qaeda) engaged heavily in drug trafficking. “The Agency’s principal client was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, one of the leading druglords and a leading heroin refiner,” writes author William Blum. Back in October of 2009, The New York Times reported that Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the installed president of Afghanistan (a former CIA-ISI operative and Unocal employee), is on the CIA payroll. “Officials quoted by The Times described Karzai as a Mafia-like figure who expanded his influence over the drug trade with the aid of U.S. efforts to eliminate his competitors,” writes Paul Joseph Watson. “The New York Times exposé pins the blame on Karzai, but fails to explain that one of the primary reasons behind the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan was the United States’ agenda to restore, not eradicate, the drug trade.” Read the rest of this article HERE