Operation Gladio: The Unholy Alliance Between the Vatican, the Cia, and the Mafia

by Paul L. Williams

The CIA believed that Hekmatyar, despite the fact that he was clearly unhinged, would be of inestimable value not only in undermining the Taraki government but also in gaining control of the poppy fields in the Helmand Valley. Its faith was not misplaced. Throughout 1978, a year before the Soviet invasion, Hekmatyar and his mujahideen (“holy warriors”) burned universities and girls’ schools throughout Afghanistan and gained feudal control over many of the poppy farmers. The pro-Taraki militants, aware of the destabilization plot, assassinated Adolph “Spike” Dubs, the US ambassador to Kabul, on February 14, 1979.8 Thanks to Hekmatyar’s actions, heroin production rose from four hundred tons in 1971 to twelve hundred tons in 1978. After the assassination of Dubs and after the millions had begun to flow to Hekmatyar’s guerrilla army, the production soared to eighteen hundred tons and a network of laboratories was set up by the mujahideen along the Afghan-Pakistan border.9 The morphine base was transported by caravans of trucks from the Helmand Valley through northern Iran to the Anatolian plains of Turkey.