Narcoterrorists. I hate these guys.
Running the Taliban is an expensive proposition–one funded largely by the manufacture and trafficking of opium and heroin.
But manufacturing heroin involves more than just scraping the residue out of opium poppies. There are some other chemicals involved in the process, and getting them to where the poppies are involves a bit of effort. These “precursor chemicals” are legal to sell and import, but their international traffic is regulated and monitored.
Often this monitoring turns up something of interest:
SEOUL: South Korean police said on Friday that two Pakistanis were among nine people arrested for trying to smuggle tonnes of chemicals for heroin production to Afghanistan’s Taliban insurgents.
Police said one Afghan, two Pakistanis, two Indians and four Koreans were detained for trying to use South Korea as a shipping point for several tonnes of acetic anhydride destined for southern Afghanistan.
There were two major Korean seizures, which police believe were related, and which together involved enough acetic anhydride to make “tens of tons” of heroin.
The stuff was actually manufactured in Japan and then shipped legally to Korea, where the “precursor laundering”, to coin a phrase, occurred and it was disguised as disinfectant and motor oil for shipment to the Taliban.
And a discussion of this precursor laundering gives me a chance to regale you with a truly mind-boggling case of it that is still playing out in Mexico. Those of you following border security news may have seen this picture in an e-mail. I see it now and then:
The background on that $207 million cash seizure –supposedly the largest seizure of drug cash–is interesting. It was found in a March 2007 raid on the Mexico City home of a Chinese-Mexican businessman named Zhenli Ye Gon. His business was importing pharmaceuticals, and allegedly that included a hefty sideline in pseudoephedrine–the active ingredient in Sudafed.
It’s also a precursor for methamphetamine.
Chinese and U.S. authorities are investigating whether a breakdown in security at their ports allowed an illegal shipment reportedly carrying more than 19 tons of a chemical intended for methamphetamine cartels to reach Mexico, the Mexican attorney general said Thursday.
The shipment led to what has been touted as the world’s largest seizure of drug money and the arrest of Chinese-Mexican businessman Zhenli Ye Gon, who is accused in the United States and Mexico of supplying pseudoephedrine to Mexican cartels who then used the drug to make methamphetamines.
Ye Gon claims he’s innocent and that he was just holding the money for Felipe Calderon. Oh, and two of the Mexican agents who investigated Ye Gon were kidnapped, beaten, and shot dead shortly after the DEA arrested him. Purely coincidental, I’m sure.
The case has languished in the courts since Ye Gon’s arrest last July, but there are still a few twists. This May, Ye Gon’s wife was arrested in Mexico.
Oopsie–Ye Gon’s married? Because reports about his U.S. arrest in Maryland last year described his “girlfriend” Michelle Wong being picked up in Vegas at the same he was.
My, that’s embarrassing. I sure hope his wife doesn’t hold a grudge or anything, and start trying to cut a deal with the authorities in which she testifies against Ye Gon…
_______
{Post by See-Dubya. I saw another report on this yesterday at the Jawa Report.}
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Do ya think some of that “stuff” came through the Panama Canal?!!!-
You know–the one WE __U.S. –built—and Carter gave away…
This is not completely true. The one good thing the Taliban did when they controlled Afghanistan was to eliminate opium poppy production. Any government in control of its territory would do the same.
The present government cannot keep farmers from growing opium poppies because it does not control the country. This is because the we pulled our forces out before the job was done in order to invade Iraq.
I hope the wife does know how to “sing”!
You’d think that with all their moral posturing, Muslims in general and the Taliban in particular would be loathe to maunfacture and sell one the worst drug scourges on the planet, often marketed to children and minorities. But no, it’s just unbelievers getting hooked, so who cares, huh?
And that is not completely true either lgm and I don’t care who spins it. I know Law and Order TV show ran that story a few times but they were not completely true either. The Taliban did reduce the opium crop a lot, that part of the crop they did not need and control to raise cash. That was always one of the fights with the Northern Alliance. The Taliban sold opium from Afghanistan when they controlled it and are doing so now from Pakistan.
No one has ever done a good job of running Afghanistan, Pakistan or any of the hills and valleys in that area. Not even Alexander the Great and his “dirty war”. Genghis Khan killed every living thing he could find and found the mountains to be difficult. The British fought three Anglo-Afghan wars and finally gave up.
I’ll be glad when we leave and perhaps lgm goes over there. And hopefully we someday give up on the drug wars and let the damn fools just die. Too many innocents are getting killed by both sides.
But that the Taliban eliminated the opium trade is just a well played not completely true.
Gee, just a quiet, unassuming pop,pop,pop and 207m richer.
The best disinfectants for the Taliban come in millimeters. You know, 5.56mm, 7.62mm, 20mm, 25mm, 30mm, and the ever-popular 120mm.
Money motivates terrorist and non-terrorist alike to do bad things.
Fashizzle mah nizzle. Where he get a freezer dat big fo his Franklins?
–Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA)
If he weren’t lying, he wouldn’t be lgm.
No units were ever redeployed from Afghanistan to Iraq. Maybe in a game of Risk you played, but not in reality.
Thanks for the seagull smackdown, AN!
I bet lgm is still concerned too about all of those translators we pulled from Afganistan and sent to Iraq…
This is yet another example illustrating the failure of the un-Constitutional War on Drugs.
I joined LEAP before I retired from Law Enforcement because I realized we were failing to reduce the flow of drugs into this country just as we failed with prohibition back during the days of Al Capone.
We are losing the so called Drug War by any measure and just like during Alcohol prohibition, corruption within the Government agencies charged with enforcing the law is out of control.
Sometimes I think the only reason we have not decided to regulate drugs is that Mexico might have to declare bankruptcy since about 80 Billion a year is being earned by the Mexican Elite running the drug trade south of the border and into this country.
While I doubt ‘Ye Gone for long time’ is innocent, I am quite sure that the corruption in Mexico goes to the top.
Nothing else would make so much sense of the border situation, the corrupt mexican army, 20 million illegals in the US, our border guards in OUR jail, etc….
Put it all together and you have, well crap like this.
JHSII said:
If we did, it would be another Bush bungle. You see, they speak different languages in Iraq (mostly Arabic) and Afghanistan (lots of Farsi).
About 12 years ago I was involved with a start up company. The firm was looking into the use of laser (Lidar) technology to search the air over a specific area for traces of chemical precursers used in processing narcotics.
These processes must be vented and in so doing will release into the atmosphere and will creat a “plume” that can be detected and “typed”.
This technology was developed by the US military as a way of alerting troops to certain chemical or gas combat usage.
Unfortunatly we were unable to get the basic funding to build a prototype. Incidently, this is a proven technology, the US had/has(?) working protos.
The possibilities of “big money” in the precurser market was known even then. The Mexican government showed great interest if the technology could be miniturized such that vapors leaking from packaging could be detected and typed.
It always amazes me the amount of capability and technology that just lays around and somehow gets passed over. The possible uses of LIDAR are inumerable.
LOL at lgm.
It was Obama that said we were having trouble in Afganistan because we had pulled all of the translators out and sent them to Iraq. President Bush didn’t pull any translators out of Afganistan to send to Iraq because he knew better.
The bungle belongs to the Obamamessiah who didn’t even bother to learn the difference between Afganistan and Iraq before he opened his mouth.
Still waiting for you to identify the units that were diverted from OEF to OIF. You’re not going to answer, are you?
Facts are meaningless to lgm.
Ha-ha-ha! Got him…
Trollin the mole i mean troll congradulations you caught one.
Are you saying that no units were moved from Afghanistan to Iraq?
Do you remember typing this?
I asked you here to identify the units you allege were redeployed from Afghanistan to Iraq.
Remember?
lgm you are an idiot! The taliban did not stop the production of opium when they took over, they regulated it to benefit them. They are still in the opium business you dipstick! Who the heck do you think pays the farmers the $535 or so dollars to cultivate poppies? Its not the Afghan government you twit! Why are libs so stupid and so blissfully ignorant? God save us.
lgm where are you? Perhaps he went to Iraq to check on his story?