Afghan Air Force: Flying Drug Mules That Fuel Civil War
They’re not just illiterates who occasionally kill their American mentors. Afghanistan’s military also ferries drugs across the country in its U.S.-purchased aircraft.
At a cost of nearly $2 billion for two years’ worth of building the Afghan Air Force, the U.S. inadvertently purchased a more convenient mechanism for trafficking opium and weapons than Afghanistan’s drug lords were previously using. But it actually gets worse than that. The aerial trade in guns and drugs through the Afghan Air Force appears to be financing the rearmament of private militias hedging against the country’s implosion after the U.S. leaves.
The Wall Street Journal reveals that the U.S. military and the Drug Enforcement Agency have investigations open into the Afghan Air Force, prompted by insider tips about the illegal cargo hauls. Some U.S. military advisers had independently picked up the scent after noticing helos disappearing without recording their flight plans. Kabul International Airport featured heavily in the drug-running scheme. At its Cargo Ramp No. 5, “unscheduled aircraft were landing late at night and cargo was being unloaded in a hurry,” the Journal reports.
The airport has a tragic significance for the U.S. military. In April 2011, a colonel in the Afghan Air Force shot and killed eight troops and a contractor from the U.S.-led coalition there. Among the troops killed was Air Force Lt. Col. Frank Bryant, who was conducting an own investigation into the drug-running charges against the Afghan Air Force.