PID News

(maSAnews.com) — The Zapata County sheriff Thursday was questioning why a Mexican military helicopter was hovering over homes on the Texas side of the Rio Grande.

It was one of the more jarring incidents of the fourth week of border tensions sparked by drug killings, and rumors of such killings, in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas.

Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez said he'd reviewed photos of the chopper flown by armed personnel Tuesday over a residential area known as Falcon Heights-Falcon Village near the binational Falcon Lake, just south of the Starr-Zapata county line. He said the helicopter appeared to have the insignia of the Mexican navy.

via Mexican military copter over U.S. neighborhood.

KABUL, Afghanistan — Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former American officials.

The agency pays Mr. Karzai for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the C.I.A.’s direction in and around the southern city of Kandahar, Mr. Karzai’s home.

The financial ties and close working relationship between the intelligence agency and Mr. Karzai raise significant questions about America’s war strategy, which is currently under review at the White House.

via Brother of Afghan Leader Said to Be Paid by C.I.A. – NYTimes.com.

Foil hat time: Is it possible the goal isn’t to stop the opium trade, but to control it? It’s not so far-fetched; journalist Gary Webb exposed the CIA’s role in introducing crack to the U.S., and it wasn’t so long ago that opium was the centerpiece of the West’s policies toward China. Besides, if we succeed in wiping out the poppies in Afghanistan, somebody loses a billion-dollar-a-year contract. — PID

Feb 13, 2008 (BLOOMBERG) — The strategy combined economic development, drug control and security: two Afghan-American brothers with a factory in Kandahar and a plan to give opium farmers an incentive to grow cotton instead. For two years, Yosuf and Abdul Mir pleaded with U.S. officials for a $1.5 million grant for their project, arguing that it meshes perfectly with a billion-dollar-a-year American opium-eradication program. Then, last year, they were turned down. Full Report

January 14, 2008 PHOENIX (AP) — A woman leaving an eyeglass store is grabbed in the parking lot by four men who force her, kicking and screaming, into a pickup. The kidnappers demand a $900,000 ransom. Full Report

January 4, 2008 (CANWEST NEWS) — Canadian-made ecstasy pills laced with crystal meth are being dumped into the U.S., prompting the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy to issue a warning Thursday. Full Report