From Volume 7, Issue 51 of EIR Online, Published Dec. 16, 2008
Russia and the CIS News Digest

Russian Anti-Drug Chief Cites Dawood Role In Mumbai

Dec. 10 (EIRNS)—In an interview today with the government daily Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Director of the Russian Federal Narcotics Control Service Victor Ivanov cited information received on British-linked South Asian narcotics kingpin Dawood Ibrahim's role in the Mumbai terror attacks, as a case in point on the need to shut down the Afghanistan opium trade. Ivanov also highlighted the role of narcoterrorists in Russia's North Caucasus, a major area of intense activity by London- and Saudi-supported separatist networks.

During the Dec. 4-5 Russian-Indian summit in New Delhi, President Dmitri Medvedev and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called on "all nations to actively cooperate with the Indian authorities and assist them in locating and bringing to justice the participants, organizers, sponsors, and protectors, and anyone in any way connected with these barbarous acts."

Ivanov zeroed in on the use of Afghan drug money to fund such activities:

The Afghan drug producers receive something on the order of $4 billion in revenue. And the international drug mafia sells this heroin all over the world, according to the most modest estimates, for over $100 billion. These superprofits cause not only genocide against peoples; they have become a powerful source of financing for organized crime and terrorist networks, which are destabilizing political systems, including in Central Asia and the Caucasus.

"A revealing case of the use of the dope network to support terrorism is the recent horrific attack by terrorists in the Indian city of Mumbai. Information received indicates that the drug dealer Dawood Ibrahim, who is well known in the region, provided the guerrillas with his logistics network for preparing and carrying out the attack.

"In Russia, as well, terrorism cannot be overcome without liquidation of the drug shipments out of Afghanistan."

On Nov. 29 a LaRouche Political Action Committee release highlighting Dawood's role, "India Nails British Dope Inc. Hand Behind Mumbai Attack," was posted in Russian by the Russian Anti-Drug Front, and is widely circulating on the Internet.

Ivanov, who was a deputy chief of the Presidential Administration when Vladimir Putin was President, laid out a stark picture of how the drug plague has swept Russia. Of 496,000 registered drug addicts in Russia in 2001, he said, the majority have died. Now there are 537,000 addicts, most of them young. But these numbers are greatly understated; statistics on traffic stops show that as few as 3% of drivers stopped in a state of narcotic intoxication are registered as addicts. He said that 90% of Russian drug addicts have Hepatitis C and 75% of them have HIV/AIDS.

Quantifying the flood of opium and heroin out of Afghanistan, Ivanov said that 29 tons of narcotics have been seized this year, with 10-15 shipments being caught daily. He said he does not favor increased cooperation with NATO in Afghanistan, since it is since the beginning of the NATO operation that opium cultivation has boomed in that country, which he termed a narco-state. For counter-terror purposes, Ivanov suggested, what's needed is serious special service operations, not an occupation by 60,000 people.

Sergei Glazyev Warns: 'World May Drown in Hyperinflation'

Dec. 1 (EIRNS) — In an interview broadcast over Infox.ru on Nov. 28, Russian economist and Academician Sergei Glazyev warned of a high risk, that the financial stabilization packages being issued by the Russian Central Bank and government "will not reach the productive sector." Currently, he noted, money is being pumped into the banking system "on word of honor," with no guarantee that manufacturing companies will receive the funds. Glazyev repeated his call for directed credits, where the rescue funds would be issued against promissory notes of productive-sector companies, for specific projects. "This was done in Europe after the war, and was very effective," Glazyev pointed out.

Manufacturing plants in Russia and Ukraine, especially in the steel and auto industries, are curtailing output and laying off workers in significant numbers.

Warning that the world financial crisis will not end until "the worthless debts are written off," among other things, Glazyev added, "Currently, those debts are not being written off. More and more money is being printed in an attempt to cover them; this is monetization of debts. And the rate of dollar emission has quadrupled. The world may drown in a wave of hyperinflation."

In November, Academician Glazyev's website prominently posted an article by Prof. Stanislav Menshikov from Slovo newspaper of Oct. 24, "The Crisis Leaps Across the Planet," in which Menshikov developed how Lyndon LaRouche's forecasts of the current crisis were on the mark, and LaRouche's current proposal for the U.S.A., Russia, China, and India to initiate a new, development-oriented monetary system. The article was reprinted in EIR, Oct. 24, 2008.

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