The link between drugs and terrorism is critical. If it is not tackled more civilians will tragically die.
The man who stands accused of planning the recent Barcelona terrorist attack which killed 15 was a convicted drug trafficker whose nefarious activities were well known by the Spanish authorities.
This is just another confirmation of the dangerous links between the illegal international narcotics trade and deadly terrorism.
As I previously wrote in The Duran:
What would it take for you to strap a bomb to your body and blow yourself and anyone and anything around you into a million little pieces? One cannot be compensated for such an activity, so in this sense, all the gold of Croesus would not be at all meaningful.
Furthermore, all great religious texts forbid such an act. True, one could simply lie about what these texts say to a young, stupid and desperate individual, but this would still only account for an infinitesimally small number of suicide bombers.
The elephant in the room is drugs and the fact is that most suicide bombers are on drugs both before and at the time of their atrocity. The ISIS mindset is the opposite of the Islamic mindset but it is a carbon copy of the insane, violent and irrational drugs mindset. Terrorism is a drug problem, not a religious problem. Those who join ISIS, no matter their background, are not converting to a faith but to a cult based on drugs and the death that is the outgrowth of drug taking.
Feeling suicidal is typically associated with depression, withdrawal, self-loathing and a feeling of immense pain or worthlessness. Few such people feel the confidence to do anything to others, let alone harm them. Violent people by contrast are generally more interested in inflecting harm on others than in harming themselves.
However, certain substances make it so that otherwise relatively rational people take flight of reason. Look at alcohol for just one example. Why do ordinary people who work in factories, offices and financial institutions get in to fights and attempt to rape women when drunk, while they would never dream of doing things like this when sober? Why too might a small man only have the irrationality to take on a big man or even a group of big man when drunk?
The reason is obvious, booze makes people take fight of reason, especially if they have a weak constitution and psyche to begin with. It goes without saying that those tempted to join ISIS or al-Qaeda especially if young and physically healthy, have deeply worrying constitutional weaknesses and problems to begin with. This is a prima facie reality.
It has been widely exposed that ISIS, al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups are also big narcotics traders and traffickers. The Afghan heroin trade alone is said to generate over $1 billion per year for ISIS. With Iraq capturing more and more oil rich territory of their country from illegal ISIS occupiers, the drugs trade is becoming even more important for groups like ISIS.
It is no coincidence that ISIS have poured resources into Salafist terrorist groups in Philippines in order to stop President Duterte’s war on drugs, a war which could cut off funding for groups like ISIS who profit from the illegal drug trade which has ravaged Philippines for years.
During al-Qaeda’s war on Libya, Revolutionary Leader Muammar Gaddafi warned that many of the terrorists were on drugs.
Muammar Gaddafi speech TRANSLATED (2011 Feb 22)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69wBG6ULNzQ
Gaddafi turned out to be absolutely correct. The pills about which Gaddafi spoke shortly before his assassination at the hands of terrorists was something called Captagon, a super-strength amphetamine that according to that generally anti-Assad and anti-Gaddafi British magazine Spectator is used widely by jihadists.
The Spectator reports that 11 million Captagon pills were seized by Turkish authorities at the Syrian border and that a Saudi Prince was recently caught trying to smuggle two tonnes of the drugs on a private jet.
The magazine interviewed a ‘former’ jihadist who claimed,
“We would fight them, slaughter them…The moment we take a pill we would stop thinking about anything”.
The drug addicted terrorist also claimed that, “You even stop thinking of your own family”, when on the pills.
Further reports found that stashes of the drug cocaine were found by Kurdish fighters in Syria at a property occupied by ISIS war lord Emir Abu Zahra.
Other reports have found that ISIS are working with the Albanian mafia to smuggle drugs throughout Europe. Drugs represent half of Albania’s GDP and is known as a country where ISIS have one of their biggest yet rarely spoken about strongholds in Europe. The ISIS-narco trade is even more apparent in the occupied Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija. Here, the Albanian mafia essentially rule the roost. According to the British paper Daily Mirror, ISIS have seized over $4 billion worth of drugs in Albania.
This issue is hardly discussed in the west where hard drugs are regularly consumed not just by miscreants and bandits but by politicians, financial workers, lawyers and other high net worth scoundrels. The fact is that the big-money of the west fuels the ISIS drug trade which in turn helps feed suicide bombers and other ISIS, al-Qaeda and FSA fighters with drugs that allow them to commit their crimes against humanity with ease and without a second thought.
We all realise that the west is more interested in regime change against secular governments in the Arab world and possibly beyond (think Philippines), but are they also more interested in ‘getting high’ than in fighting terrorism? The reality rather speaks for itself.
Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte is hated by those who use drugs, profit from the sale of drugs and supply drugs to terrorists. This is all the more reason for those with a clear conscience and pure intentions to support Duterte’s war on drugs as well as his war on ISIS. It is after all, the same war and it is a war that must be waged without mercy.
The evidence that the mastermind of the Barcelona attack was in fact a convicted narcotics trafficker serves to further emphasise the connection between drugs and terrorism. This is one of the many reasons why drugs should not be taken as anything other than an issue of fatal seriousness. To downplay the role drugs play in terrorism is to do a disservice to the security of people across the world.
