The color of money in Afghanistan has a chemical signature
WMR has learned from its Asian intelligence sources that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has detected hundreds of millions of dollars worth of chemically-marked U.S. and foreign currency is flowing through Afghanistan, mostly from ships leaving Dubai and off-loading the cash in Pakistan for overland transit into Afghanistan.
The DEA fears the cash is being used by the CIA to traffic in opium in Afghanistan and then using the chemical markers on the bills to trace the money. The bills involved in the chemical marking program are reportedly U.S. dollars, euros, Indian rupees, and Saudi riyals.
The chemically-marked cash in Afghanistan differs from the Nigerian scam chemical markings in that the cash awash in Afghanistan is professionally marked whereas the Nigerian scam cash is superficially marked to lure unsuspecting people into buying worthless solvents to eradicate the markings.
The word from Afghanistan is that the country is awash in so much cash from the opium trade, American officials are perplexed as to what to do next.
WMR has obtained further details of the chemically-dyed cash program used by the team of U.S. Special Envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke. Holbrooke reportedly authorized the payment of one type of chemically-treated cash to failed presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah in order for his campaign to buy votes. Chemically-treated cash can later be retrieved. Holbrooke was hoping to fix the election for Abdullah but President Hamid Karzai engaged in even greater election fraud, ensuring his re-election.
Meanwhile, Holbrooke authorized the payment of a different type of chemically-treated cash to Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of President Karzai who is directly linked to Afghanistan's $4 billion annual drug producing and smuggling industry and is known to be on the CIA's payroll. Holbrooke was hoping to prove with the tainted cash the involvement of Ahmed Wali Karzai in the drug smuggling business as a way to help Abdullah against Hamid Karzai. The effort failed. Holbrooke recently suffered another major failure for his agenda when the leader of the Iranian Baluchi terrorist Jundallah movement, Abdolmalek Rigi, was arrested in a joint sting operation carried out by Iran's VEVAK intelligence and Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI). Rigi was arrested when his plane was diverted to Bandar Abbas while he was en route to meet Holbrooke at the U.S. airbase in Manas, Kyrgyzstan.
Holbrooke also did not bargain for the way the large sums of cash get spread around the different competing interest groups in Afghanistan. Some of the marked cash destined for Karzai's brother and his Pashtuns ended up in the hands of Abdullah's Tajik supporters while the differently-marked cash for Abdullah's Tajiks wound up in the possession of Karzai's Pashtun opium smugglers. In addition, some of the treated cash in lawless Afghanistan found its way into the hands of the Taliban and even the ubiquitous private military contractors in the country.
The problem for Holbrooke's strategy now is that the CIA is running an independent drug smuggling operation in Afghanistan, using banks in Dubai as laundry machines, the DEA is being hamstrung by the CIA and is overwhelmed by the amount of drugs and cash flowing into and out of Afghanistan, and the Department of Treasury, with the approval of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, is approving more and more U.S. currency to be dumped into Afghanistan while spending even more money for a cash retrieval effort involving hundreds of banks.
Dubai banks are unwilling to cooperate in the cash retrieval because the sudden influx of money from Afghanistan is helping Dubai's economy to recover after it went bust a few months ago. Adding to the problem is the involvement of Pakistan-based crime syndicate boss Dawood Ibrahim and his D-Company, on-and-off again collaborators of the CIA, in the drug money laundering. Last September, one of Ibrahim's top aides and money launderers, Naresh Jain, was arrested in India by Indian counter-narcotics officers. According to the Indian press, Jain, who re-located his base of operations from Dubai to New Delhi, was wanted by the DEA and Italian and British police after the two agencies conducted OPERATION KHYBER PASS. Jain is listed as a terrorist funder by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and he has been linked by the department to drug money laundering on behalf of the Taliban and "Al Qaeda." The cover story is that it is the Taliban that is benefiting financially from opium smuggling in Afghanistan when, in reality, it is the CIA and its Afghan proxies. "Al Qaeda" is merely a contrivance of the CIA.
The Afghan heroin smuggling network operated by Ibrahim's D-Company extended from Afghanistan to Pakistan, Turkey, Nigeria, Italy, and China. The Dubai money laundering operations extended from the emirate to Islamic hawala money exchanges in Nigeria, Italy, Afghanistan, China, Pakistan, Bolivia, Democratic Republic of Congo and banks in the Cooks Islands, Cyprus, and Australia.
However, Holbrooke has apparently not learned from his experience with Jundallah and Karzai's drug trafficking family. WMR has learned that the Rigi-Holbrooke meeting at the Manas airbase was also to include a pre-arranged meeting between Rigi and captured members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), who have been converted from adherents of Osama Bin Laden's "Al Qaeda" to pipeline saboteurs, Holbrooke wanted to see an alliance between Jundallah and the reformed IMU guerrillas to plan operations targeting the Turkmenistan-Uzbekistan-Kyrgyzstan-China (TUKC) gas pipeline that recently began operations. The United States used Jundallah to attack the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline in Baluchistan and Holbrooke was hoping that Rigi's experience would benefit the turned IMU terrorists who operate in the Fergana Valley of Tajikistan. The "reformed" IMU members have a price on their head -- the IMU is wanted by Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan for inciting Muslim rebellions, while the Russian SVR intelligence also keeps a wary eye on their activities. IMU stalwarts who have not joined the American side are routinely tracked down and killed by the CIA and U.S. Special Forces in Afghanistan. The IMU members working for the United States are confined to places like Bagram airbase in Afghanistan and Manas in Kyrgyzstan for protection until they can be dispatched by the CIA to carry out their missions.
After the Iranian capture of Rigi, many of the IMU converts now fear ending up in a similar situation, being captured by the governments who have a price on their heads. Holbrooke was to travel to Ashgabat, the Turkmenistan capital after leaving Kyrgyzstan after the Iranian capture of Rigi. However, the Holbrooke meeting with Turkmenistan President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov was canceled at the last minute due to a "scheduling conflict." Instead, Holbrooke traveled to Georgia where that nation's U.S. and Israeli puppet president, Mikhael Saakashvili, announced he was sending a further 1000 Georgian troops to fight in Afghanistan. WMR has learned that after it was known that Manas was being used as a rendezvous point between Rigi, ex-IMU members, and Holbrooke to plan sabotage against the TUKC pipeline, the Turkmen president told Holbrooke to stay away.
Holbrooke is pushing for the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline which terminates in Gujarat. TAPI has been heavily-invested in by U.S. oil and oil services companies.
The ex-IMU guerrillas have been reduced at Bagram and Manas to smelling the cooking of bacon fat, American soldiers drinking beer and engaging in sex with young Muslim women.
What could be stirring among the CIA's Uzbek converts is a situation similar to the agency's co-opting the support of Jordanian intelligence officers in Afghanistan. On December 30, the world was told through the corporate media that a Jordanian triple agent for the CIA named Dr. Humam Khalil Abu Mulal al-Balawi, who reportedly worked for Al Qaeda, Jordan's General Intelligence Department (GID), and the CIA, walked into the CIA's Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost province in eastern Afghanistan and blew himself up, killing seven CIA officers and contractors, including the base's female chief. An eighth person, said to be an Afghan security officer, was also reported to have been killed in the blast but then it was revealed that a Jordanian Army Captain named Sharif Ali Bin Zeid was also killed. Zeid was said to be Balawi's handler and he was given a royal state funeral in Amman.
However, Balawi has now surfaced in a "posthumous" video tape claiming that he double crossed his handler Zeid and the CIA. WMR previously suggested that it was Zeid who was likely the person who "switched sides." The recent videotape featuring a Balawi who is very much alive, cheerful, and with more of beard growth and a darker sun tan than photographs released of him some months ago, indicate that a Jordanian died in the Chapman base blast, but it was not Balawi.
Balawi says in a 43-minute videotape that he only expected to kill Zeid but that it was an unexpected gift to kill the CIA agents. Balawi states: "We planned for something but got a bigger gift, a gift from Allah, who brought us, through His accompaniment, a valuable prey -- Americans, and from the CIA. That's when I became certain that the best way to teach Jordanian intelligence and the CIA a lesson is with the martyrdom belt." Dr. Balawi also describes how he was recruited by the GID and then the CIA after his arrest in Jordan and how he was sent to Afghanistan to work as an agent for the CIA spying on "Al Qaeda." Balawi also states that GID helped in the 2006 killing by U.S. forces of Jordanian "Al Qaeda" operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who hailed from Balawi's Jordanian hometown of Zarqa, and the assassination by Mossad and the CIA of Imad Mughniyeh, the Lebanese Hezbollah military commander, in Damascus in 2008.
Balawi's post-death comments are probably the most amazing CIA asset revelations since CIA director William Casey granted The Washington Post's Bob Woodward an extensive four-minute interview on the Iran-contra scandal as Casey was drawing his last breath in his hospital bed in 1987.
