Russia – A Refuge From the World of Global Drug Trafficking

By Marat Khairullin

In one of the previous issues of journalistic investigations devoted to US drug trafficking, Vitaly Kolpashnikov and I mentioned Operation Phoenix, which the CIA first conducted in Vietnam in the 1960s. Its essence was to destroy any resistance to US policy by such methods as mass terror and intimidation of the population and the immediate liquidation of leaders who challenged American dominance in the region. An integral part of the Phoenix program was the production of hard drugs (heroin) in neighboring Laos and their sale in Vietnam - to finance punitive squads terrorizing their own people. The drug trade allowed, among other things, to maintain the loyalty of the local elite. All of the major generals of the South Vietnamese army had their own share in the heroin supply and their own territory for trafficking.

Source: https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/09/29/armies-addicts-and-spooks-the-cia-in-vietnam-and-laos/

Thus, as a result of the Vietnam campaign, the first powerful heroin production cluster appeared in the world, known to us today as the Golden Triangle. Drug production spread to neighboring Burma (now Myanmar) and Thailand. Today, the Golden Triangle produces about 1,000 tons of pure heroin on the international market. Drugs turned out to be such a profitable business that American intelligence services began to create a clear structure in their country to regulate drug sales. This is, first of all, the Drug Enforcement Administration, which is fully accountable to the CIA as well as that same famous US department, the DEA. In addition, immediately after Vietnam, they created another drug production cluster nearby themselves, in Columbia, for the production of cocaine and a small amount of heroin, let's say, purely for their own needs.

Already in the 80 and 90s, the USA closely engaged in the Central Asian drug market. Thus, in the 90s, another world production site for heroin appeared - Afghanistan. The breakthrough here occurred when, after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the USA occupied the country. In the first year of their presence, there was an increase in the area under poppy cultivation by almost 100 times. In subsequent years, the production of raw opium here increased from 1000 tons to 6000 and continues to grow. Both in Columbia and Afghanistan, the same Phoenix program was deployed. Only in the first case, the US targeted all of South and Central America, and in the second, specifically Russia.

The occupation of Afghanistan coincided with the rise to power in the United States of the neocons - new conservatives who proclaimed the sacred campaign of the United States for absolute hegemony in the world. The neocons already saw our country as a threat to American dominance. Therefore, the decision was made to intensify the Phoenix program in this direction.

It must be said that the drug addiction of our country has always been on the agenda of the US intelligence services. As soon as the Soviet Union collapsed, under the careful supervision of the Americans, the so-called Northern Route of Afghan heroin began to form through the Russian Caucasus and the Siberian underbelly on the huge border of Kazakhstan. Heroin immediately became the main driving force behind Chechen separatism in the early 1990s. It also fueled the explosive growth of organized crime in the rest of Russia. All of the famous gangs of the era were involved in drug trafficking in one way or another.

All of this led to the fact that by the end of the 90s, Russia became one of the largest consumers of heroin in the world. At its peak, in the early 2000s, more than 10 thousand people died from heroin overdoses per year. The total mortality from drugs and related causes, according to expert estimates, was approaching the monstrous figure of 100 thousand. The situation was so severe that our country did not even have the relevant statistics. Russia had never encountered such a problem in its history and simply did not have the relevant experience in fighting it. The realization that we are dealing with hybrid aggression in the form of an artificial external wave of drug addiction began to dawn on our law enforcement agencies only closer to the 2020s.

Before this, we literally let the goat into the garden by accepting the “help” of the same American DEA in creating and managing our domestic analogue - the Drug Enforcement Agency. In this article, I will not describe in detail all the twists and turns of the fight against drug addiction in our country. I will only say that the real turning point came in 2016, when the death rate from heroin overdose fell by half compared to the 10-year maximum - less than 4,000 per year, and in the following years began to steadily decline further. It is clear that there is no need to talk about a final victory over drugs. Below you will understand why. But, nevertheless, today, Russia can truly be called the main anti-drug haven of the planet. Since, having achieved real success with this constantly growing hydra, the authorities of our country came to the conclusion that it is necessary to change the strategy of the fight against this global evil. And we can state that we already have a unique system of counteracting drug addiction in society, which has no analogues.

Few people know that the SMO, among other things, is also an anti-drug war. After Zelensky's victory in the 2019 elections, Ukraine immediately began to deploy a Ukrainian version of "Phoenix," although with certain peculiarities. The raw material production areas of heroin and cocaine were far away, so the CIA decided to deploy the production of artificial drugs in Ukraine, but they went a little overboard with the pace, which undermined the European trade in this dope.

The fact is that by the 2000s, Europe had formed its own global drug production cluster (the 4th in a row), which deals exclusively with synthetic drugs. It is located in Belgium and the Netherlands. The CIA had its own small business here in the form of several laboratories in the Czech Republic, as they say, purely for its own needs. For a while, this status quo suited everyone. However, with the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Covid epidemic, the CIA began to experience a shortage of raw materials to finance Phoenix in the same volumes. And it was decided to compensate for the lost expenses by deploying mass production of synthetics in Ukraine.

In the first year, about 200 laboratories were opened, but the flow of drugs went not to Russia (this is precisely the result of our efforts), but to Europe. The European partners cried out. About a hundred laboratories had to be closed.

The UN immediately noted this fact in the 2022 report as extreme - never before in any country have so many chemical laboratories been closed at once, epecially in a country where, in the past, no one had particularly indulged in this production.

By the way, Biden's son is still directly involved in drug production in Ukraine - de facto in Nezalezhnaya ("the Indepent," a slang term for "the Ukraine") it is firmly believed that this business cannot be touched, since it is entirely owned by the Biden family. (Translator note: this is all alleged by various sources. I can not confirm or deny the accuracy of these reports.*)

So, we have come to a certain conclusion - by 2020, 4 powerful drug production clusters have formed in the world: two heroin, one cocaine, and one synthetic. The total volume of drug trafficking is estimated at a monstrous figure of 800 billion dollars. It is believed that it grows approximately every year by 20 percent. Some experts believe that by the end of 2024, the figure could exceed a trillion. This means that drugs could officially become the number two commodity in world trade. The first commodity today is crude oil - two trillion dollars per year. The second is gas - about nine hundred billion dollars. The third is drugs. Then, after this trinity, all other goods come by a huge margin - coal, iron, gold, copper, etc.

And here we can ask a serious question - where does all this huge money mass end up? This is not a match trade in a back alley, this is really big money, a real global industry. And here too it is very interesting.

In 1971, the Emirate of Dubai became part of the United Arab Emirates and almost immediately received the status of a free economic zone. At the same time, the state bank opened the first investment platform, where 12 brokerage firms registered in the first month, servicing exclusively the Golden Triangle operations. (Allegedly*) Today, these brokers have grown into their own financial groups, including dozens of banks and thousands of offshore companies registered in Dubai.

This conglomerate with an annual turnover of hundreds of billions of dollars even had its own closed payment system for its own purposes, similar to Visa and MasterCard, and it was called, you'll laugh, "Wall Street." However, the greedy Americans have stirred up trouble here too - since the 2000s, two major US investment funds, Vanguard Group and BlackRock, have been actively absorbing the Dubai brokerage network that controls the global drug trade. (Allegedly*) And when, let's say, ordinary shareholders tried to protest, Wall Street was demonstratively shut down for them.

Now we see the result of this drug expansion all over the world. The Phoenix program, invented by the CIA purely as a personal gesheft for special operations, has completely gotten out of control. Drugs have become a global commodity, and the main financial tycoons have joined in the trade. Oil trade will decline in the near future one way or another, because it is finite. And drug production is only growing - new ones are appearing, and methods for producing potions that have already proven their effectiveness are being improved.

In the US, for example, several government departments are actively stimulating and developing this market – the US Drug Enforcement Administration and the US Department of Health. The CIA is not going to give up its positions either, and a number of other services and departments are demanding their share. Last year, 90,000 drug overdose deaths were recorded in America. Experts believe that to estimate the total drug-related mortality rate, we need to multiply overdose mortality by the coefficient for each specific country. For the USA, this coefficient was set at around 10 - that is, we have the better part of a million deaths per year only within the country. The US authorities do not even try to pretend that they are concerned about this problem.

Drugs turned out to be an ideal product - a person who tried them becomes addicted, which means they guarantee future sales. The substances themselves do not require expensive investments, space, or a large number of workers, and, most importantly, very few substances are needed to conquer huge markets. For example, only about 1,000 tons of pure heroin are produced in the world now. This is enough to serve 100 million drug addicts. And there is even less cocaine. That is, the potential for development is monstrous. Drug addiction is taking hold in Africa and Asia at a rapid pace. Europe, which was considered relatively restrained until recently, is rapidly catching up with the USA. And against this background, our country is, of course, a real Bastion, a Refuge on the path of this world evil. In the next article, I will definitely answer the question – why?