DISINFO: US intelligence involved in drug trafficking and other criminal activities in Afghanistan
SUMMARY
In Afghanistan US intelligence has set up a network for illegal fund-raising through drug trafficking, extortion of guerrilla fighters for the passage of vehicles, and kickbacks on military contracts. Perhaps US spies are unhappy that Russian and US diplomats are jointly promoting talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban. Such negotiations threaten to put an end to this illegal fund-raising network.
RESPONSE
Conspiracy theory. The article provides no evidence to support its accusations that US intelligence is engaged in drug trafficking or other illicit fund-raising operations in Afghanistan. The article’s message is consistent with pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives on Afghanistan that seek to discredit the military and intelligence presence of the US and its allies in the country. For example, pro-Kremlin media have claimed that former Afghan president Hamid Karzai called Russia to liberate his nation from US occupation; that the West and the US are ferrying Islamic State members to Afghanistan to use them against China, as part of a so-called “Anaconda ring”; or that NATO is denying the presence of terrorists in the country but the FSB has evidence of it. Pro-Kremlin outlets continue to spread disinformation about US objectives in Afghanistan aimed at eroding Afghan public trust in U.S. security guarantees. Russia’s state media outlet Sputnik is a leading agent of such disinformation, as it operates a Dari-language website. The US and its allies are, in fact, very much aware that the Afghan drug trade, a serious international security threat, has undermined reconstruction and security in Afghanistan by financing radical Islamist insurgent groups and fueling government corruption in the country. Read a similar case of pro-Kremlin disinformation on Afghanistan claiming that NATO is responsible for the destruction of Afghanistan.