As for the Serious Organized Cime Unit. It kinda cracks me up as almost comical the names that the UK government gives to its bureaucratic entities, its almost melodramatic. I know there are varrying levels of organized crime but they couldn't settle for organized crime unit or tranational...they had to use
serious.8) Anyway, I would argue thet what the interviewee was saying might have alot of basis in reality. When the Taliban decided to ban opium in 2000 it wasn't for religious/altruistic reasons but they wanted to decrease the supply of opium, the way OPEC nations do oil, to increase the price of opium and fund there war against the Northern Alliance. Every now and again a developing nation with lots of oil will sell petroleum cheep on the world market which throws a monkey wrench in OPEC's plans. So anyway, the monkey wrench in this scenario came via the good ol' USA and our NATO allies. As you all probably know, the supply of opium and heroin skyrocketed, once the invasion of afganistan began and the Taliban were deposed. The USA under the Bush administration took the lead role and its common knowledge that they widely ignored opium growing- and probably ignored international please to do something about it in the interest of not alienating warlords that were helpful against the Taliban. Karzai is corrupt and his brother is a known player in the narcotics game. A wikileaks cable from one of the southern provinces (maybe helmund?) is very telling. At any rate it was in the UK sector and contained information criticizing the UK armed forces as being ineffective and asked that they be replaced by US forces. Anybody who knows the military world could tell you that the UK forces are among the most professional, well trained, and effective from the SAS, SBS, Royal Marines, Paras, to the regular troops, its a professional not conscript army.
My interpretation, the UK troops were too good, and whats more were starting to target players in the dope business. The request is that they be replaced by "more competent US troops." Now I think he was hedging a bet that the US would ignore poppy eradication like they had done traditionally in an effort to "win hearts and minds." We have Obama now "that was mum on the whole drug issue in his State of the Union Address-which is strange but off subject," who is more of an internationalist. The Russians were complaining in the fall that the USA wasn't doing enough to stop the "drug problem" and afgan corruption- they wanted to send their own troops, they, in fact stationed Russian border guards in Tajikistan that were subsidized by the UN. So without going to in debth, the USA is working with other countries, I suspect at counternarcotics efforts. Plus there were international cordinated strikes on the Northern and Southern routes, add to that more colaboration through interpole and the UNODCP and the blight, and the rains, and the Taliban that are involved with poppies using opium stooks under their control as a bank account for future needs. The UK and Russia have taken a leading role in fighting west-central Asian originated opium. Plus steped up domestic counternarcotics efforts- its probably a confluence of all these factors- but the British police and I don't know about the Garda, seem to be steping up their efforts domestically.
It sounds like the UK SOCU is working with its counterparts in the Turkish government. My advice is to lobby your MP or rep in the republic
not to allow Turkey into the EU because that may be the bargaining chip that the turks are playing-push hard to characterize the modern Turkish state as the Hardline Islamic fundamentalist state that they've become friends of iran, which works with and probably covertly suports the type of people that blow up subways and would attack western nationals world wide, not the secular moderate state of old. That might piss off the turks enough to reopen there country as a trade route-or stop providing the level of cooperation and then age old corruption will take over and reopen that section of the trade route.
About SOCU, every bureacrasy has to justify its budget, like I posted in the social thread from Joseph D. McNamara, former chief of police of San Jose, CA:
T'S THE money, stupid." After 35 years as a police officer in three of the country's largest cities, that is my message to the righteous politicians who obstinately proclaim that a war on drugs will lead to a drug free America. About $500 worth of heroin or cocaine in a source country will bring in as much as $100,000 on the streets of an American city. All the cops, armies, prisons, and executions in the world cannot impede a market with that kind of tax-free profit margin. It is the illegality that permits the obscene markup, enriching drug traffickers, distributors, dealers, crooked cops, lawyers, judges, politicians, bankers, businessmen.
Naturally, these people are against reform of the drug laws. Drug crooks align themselves with their avowed enemies, such as the Drug Enforcement Administration, in opposing drug reform. They - are joined by many others with vested economic interests. President Eisenhower warned of a military-industrial complex that would elevate the defense budget unnecessarily. That military-industrial complex pales in comparison to the host of industries catering to our national puritanical hypocrisy-researchers willing to tell the government what it wants to hear, prison builders, correction and parole officers' associations, drug-testing companies, and dubious purveyors of anti-drug education. Mayor Schmoke is correct about the vested interests in the drug war.... And the conviction that the use of certain drugs is immoral chills the ability to scrutinize rationally and to debate the effects of the drug war. When Ethan Nadelmann pointed out once that it was illogical for the most hazardous drugs, alcohol and nicotine, to be legal while less dangerous drugs were illegal, he was roundly denounced. A leading conservative supporter of the drug war contended that while alcohol and nicotine addiction was unhealthy and could even cost lives, addiction to illegal drugs could result in the loss of one's soul. No empirical proof was given....Conservatives like Bennett normally advocate minimal government. Liberals like Califano ordinarily recoil from the draconian prison sentences and property seizures used in the drug war. This illustrates why it is so difficult to get politicians to concede that alternative approaches to drug control need to be studied. We are familiar with the perception that the first casualty in any war is truth. Eighty years of drug-war propaganda has so influenced public opinion that most politicians believe they will lose their jobs if their opponents can claim they are soft on drugs and crime. Yet, public doubt is growing. Gallup reports that in 1990 only 4 per cent of Americans believed that "arresting the people who use drugs" is the best way for the government to allocate resources.
So anyway, the man was probably pressured hard by the Torries to clamp down hard and come up with a workable plan. It sounds like they have other projects to keep the money flooding in, even in an era of UK cutbacks.
From the above quote though, it would be like your an insect exterminator- if you do your job well, you;ll have customers and referals, too good, there won't be any pests left and you won't have customers or some natural predator comes by to eliminate ants or bedbugs, ect...you'll be out of a job unless their still mice to go after. But were talking about government beaucracies not private sector who live in a different world.
Its to the US DEAs advantage to make high profile busts but not be too efficient because they are very specialized. In an ideal world drugs would be legalized and they could be reasigned to make sure taxes are collected, going back to their treasury department roots. Be safer for them. Maybe they would get paid more salary with all the money the US government would save and make from taxes.
The silver lining, the UK is working in colombia but the warlords in Burma need money to fight the central government and I came across a piece saying that they are resuming poppy cultivation and adopting more sophisticated tasmania like agricultural, alkaloid extraction techniques. So the shan states, ect may be the poor country throwing a monkey wrench in OPEC's plans in my earler analogy (if I haven't put you to sleep yet). Remember in capitalism the free market always finds a way. The 500,000 pound question is when and how.