NATO blackmailing Russia with drugs

NATO is using Afghanistan's opium as a threat to the Russia to force Moscow into cooperating with the alliance in the Afghan war, a US analyst says.

“There is a certain very real blackmail being imposed on Russia that the country is targeted for a kind of an opium war,” Jeff Steinberg from Executive Intelligence Review said on Wednesday.

“NATO wants to send this message to Moscow that “cooperation with NATO on resupply and logistical support for Afghanistan operation might result in a curtailment of some of those drug flows which are for Russia,” Steinberg said in his interview with Press TV.

“Since the US invasion of Afghanistan back in 2001, there has been an eruption of opium and heroin flows from Afghanistan, through Central Asia, into Russia,” he went on to add.

Steinberg referred to the Russian anti-drug program study which shows that every year 100,000 Russians are dying from overdosing on heroin and opium coming out of Afghanistan.

He, however, argued that since the economic and financial crisis has prompted NATO members to reduce their military capabilities, “so the threat that NATO represented on the border of Russia, may be seen as a diminishing threat.”

“NATO is becoming more and more of a paper tiger, especially, as their mission in Afghanistan goes from bad to worse,” Steinberg added.

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