Golden Crescent - Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan comprise what is referred to as the Golden crescent, which surpassed the Golden Triangle in heroin production in 2002.
Operation Cyclone
In Operation Cyclone, devized by national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski and led by Texas Congressman Charlie Wilson, the Golden Crescent had been utilized for the Mudjahedin to fight the Soviets in Afhganistan, with the US helping transport the opium to refineries in Pakistan. It is estimated that the output made up one half of all heroin entering the US at that time, with US officials admitting in 93 that they had failed to take action because their allies relied on the proceeds. Then the taliban took over in 1996, banning opium productoin in 2000, resulting in a 94% decrease worldwide.
Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman, convicted of responsibility for the first attack on the World Trade Center, helped the CIA establish contacts with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who helpeed them fight the Soviets. In 1993, Hekmatyar became prime minister of the country, serving under the new president, Burhanuddin Rabbani, only to form an alliance with Abdul Rashid Dostum, laying siege to Kabul, killing 4,000 residents.
Hekmatyar and Rabbani reconciled in 1995, along side Minister of Defense, Ahmed Shah Massoud, whose troops systematically raped and killed members of the Shi’ite Hazzara community in Kabul.
The death of nine minibus passengers in an explosion near Kandahar in 2003 was attributed to Hekmatyar's military arm, Hezb-i-Islami.
American invasion
This lasted for about a year, before the American invasion toppled the Taliban, restoring opium production, with the help of the northern allience, made up of warlords and drug cartels, some of whome enjoy raping boys. In Afghanistan, prepubescent boys called bacha bazi (literal translation: "boy play") are sold into sexual slavery. Military commanders, former warlords and rich businessmen treat the young boys like concubines, force them to dance and sexually abuse them. (This was banned under the the Taliban, and would be again when they retook control.)
"At night we can hear them screaming, but we're not allowed to do anything about it," the Marine's father, Gregory Buckley Sr., recalled his son telling him before he was shot to death at the base in 2012. He urged his son to tell his superiors. "My son said that his officers told him to look the other way because it's their culture." After being told he would be sent home early, Greg Buckly was shot dead by an Afghan trainee who yelled ''I just did jihad'' afterwards. Another soldier, Green beret, Charles Martland, struck a US allied commander for kidnapping and raping a local boy and beating mother for seeking help from the Americans. Martland ended up being discharged, and permenantly removed from Afhganistan. The country was so dependent on opium that it was referred to as a narco state, producing more than 90% of the illicit heroin globally.
Kunduz hospital airstrike - In 2015, a US gunship attacked the Kunduz Trauma Centre operated by Doctors Without Borders in Kunduz. 42 were killed and over 30 were injured.
That same year, a British NGO showcased Marcel Duchamp's famous 1917 conceptual artwork Fountain, (a signed, upside-down urinal) as a form of cultural exchange from the West.
Paramilitary units of the Afghan Intelligence Service, trained by the CIA, were embarking on a terror campaign across the country.
In late 2018, Unit 01 entered a madrasa (a school for young children) and summarily executed 12 boys; in May of 2019 they killed six children and dumped them into an irrigation ditch; in June, they throw grenades and shoot up another school, killing nine. Witnesses say they saw Americans with them. Hamdullah Mohib, former national security advisor of Afghanistan: ''01 is a unit that operates, as you know, in partnership with the CIA.''
'War for women's rights' - The government of President Hamid Karzai, installed by the US, presided over the deterioration of women's rights, and in some instances actively promoted taking them away. Karzai signed a law that legalized rape in marriage.
Afghan feminist Malalai Joya writes in her memoir A Woman Among Warlords, "It was dust in the eyes of the world." Joya is the most uncompromising and trenchant critic of the U.S. attempt to sell an imperialist war as a humanitarian war to liberate Afghan women. In the introduction to her book, she writes: ''The United States has tried to justify its occupation with rhetoric about "liberating" Afghan women, but we remain caged in our country, without access to justice and still ruled by women-hating criminals. Fundamentalists still preach that "a woman should be in her house or in the grave." In most places, it is still not safe for a woman to appear in public uncovered, or to walk on the street without a male relative. Girls are sold into marriage. Rape goes unpunished.''
She was denied a visa to enter the U.S. for a speaking tour to promote her book.
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