Episodes
Episode 1
Kabul DEA Boss, Mike Marsac
The New Colombia
In 2012, when President Obama ordered America begin its ‘drawdown’ from Afghanistan, a police operation was quietly launched in Kabul. Some say it was the most inspired investigation they’ve ever known. Others say it was the most futile. (You be the judge). The target: the Taliban Senior Leadership.
The accusation: they were an organised crime cartel, running a massive drug business exporting opium out of Afghanistan. Leading the mission: Kabul DEA Boss, Mike Marsac, a folksy ‘Fargo-like’ cop from Colorado. He calls the case Operation Reciprocity, and is doggedly determined to get the job done.
But with President Obama’s announcement, he’s now running out of time…
Episode 2
The Most Bizzare Bust. Ever.
We go back to where it began. A foundation stone of the DEA’s case against the Taliban’s suspected drug cartel was the Haji Bashar Noorzai investigation. The biggest trafficker in Kandahar - and the first man to finance the Taliban - Noorzai was a target even before the DEA arrived proper into Afghanistan.
He proclaimed to be a partner, even delivering 15 truckloads of Taliban weapons to US Forces in 2001/2002. But, indicted in 2004 and on the US ‘Top Ten Most Wanted’ list, Noorzai had disappeared. Then, incredibly, two mysterious ‘civilians’ called Brian and Mike managed to find him...
And then the really weird stuff started to happen.
Haji Bashar Noorzai, with the mysterious ‘Mike’ and ‘Brian’.
Episode Two coming in late 2023
Episode 3
DEA Special Agent
Keith Weis in poppy field,
East Afghanistan
Who's Making the Money?
The roots of Operation Reciprocity began here. In 2004, just three years after 9/11, a record-breaking poppy crop was harvested in Afghanistan. With such sobering figures, and the Noorzai case unfolding, big questions are being asked about the booming Afghan opium trade. Most critically: Who’s making the money?
Is it the Taliban? Is terrorism being funded by drug trafficking? With virtually no law enforcement ‘in country’, the US sends a handful of DEA agents to Kabul to investigate. Mike Marsac, John O’Rourke and Keith Weis are among them. Their task is immense, but the challenges back home soon become even bigger.
Warning signs are everywhere, but nobody in Washington is listening…
Episode Three coming in late 2023
Episode 4
The Trouble with Uruzgan
Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the co-founder of the Taliban, was a prime target on the DEA’s Operation Reciprocity ‘hit list’. Hailing from a poppy rich province called Uruzgan, Mullah Baradar was the alleged mastermind managing the Taliban’s drug business - and their military operations, to boot.
Also from Uruzgan - indeed, its Governor - was Jan Mohammad Khan (JMK). A close friend of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, JMK was a key partner in the War on Terror, promising to help find and fight people like Mullah Baradar. But… Governor JMK was ALSO an opium kingpin. And a ‘War Lord’ as well.
So… what to do? Not just for the US Command, or the DEA, but the Australian troops sent to Uruzgan in 2005. Ally with Governor JMK, or arrest him?
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Taliban Co-Founder,
Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar
(Left)
Episode Four coming in late 2023
Episode 5
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Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, British Ambassador
and Special Representative to Afghanistan, 2007 – 2011
Episode Five coming in late 2023
Close Friends. Closer Enemies
The UK took the lead for Counter-Narcotics (CN) in Afghanistan’s reconstruction effort, but they never really led it. Indeed, CN policy caused some of the fiercest battles of the war. The US push to poison the poppy fields by air, for one, had the Brits bristling with resistance (to say nothing of the Afghans…)
But British CN Officers made some remarkable achievements – the investigation and arrest of drug king Haji Lal Jan a prime example. It would prove critical in the Operation Reciprocity case for their DEA counterparts, particularly when Haji Lal Jan managed to ‘walk’ from an Afghan prison.
It made the Americans even more determined to (re)arrest him, but cases like this made many Brits see Counter-Narcotics - and Afghanistan itself - as a poisoned chalice. Ambassador Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles was one of them
Episode 6
The Big Man
He was 6’5’’, 370 pounds, a founding member of the Taliban’s ‘Opium Council’ - allegedly - and a ‘devout Muslim’. He hosted legendary parties, had three wives, more girlfriends, mansions in at least six different countries - and was moving about a billion dollars a year in drugs. He is Haji Juma Khan. HJK.
HJK played ‘the great game’ of Afghanistan with aplomb. He had connections everywhere. With President Karzai’s family. With the terrorists. With the CIA. Was he friend or foe? Asset, or spy? ‘Our’ man, or conman? And the biggest question of all: What does the DEA do when ‘HJK’ agrees to meet with them?
Does he become informant… or defendant? Neither... or both?
DEA Agent, Ed Follis and Haji Juma Khan.
Episode Six coming in late 2023
Episode 7
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DEA Special Agent John O’Rourke with General Daud Daud.
Episode Seven coming in late 2023
War Hero, or Heroin Trafficker?
Working with the DEA was a life and death decision for Afghans. But a few men – and women - risked it all, believing in a better future. They’d soon be capturing their country’s most dangerous criminals, and saving countless people from kidnappers. Zafar Noori and Mosa Rahimi are just two of them.
They were led by Counter-Narcotics Minister General Daud Daud. War hero. Suave. Revered. But when accused of drug dealing by renowned Canadian journalist Graeme Smith the DEA - and many others - rushed to General Daud’s defence. Would it be enough? Or was his downfall inevitable?
Would the DEA’s campaign in Afghanistan, and the Operation Reciprocity case, be crushed by greed and graft? Or was General Daud simply doing what he had to do to survive?
Episode 8
The Biggest Bank Robbery. Ever.
Every day, at Kabul Airport, a crew of regular ‘frequent flying’ Afghans would board a plane for Dubai. Every one of them carried bags stuffed full of US$100 bills. And every day the DEA was watching them. Who was sending these plane loads of money? And how were they making it? Drugs, perhaps? Corruption?
And why was Chairman of the Kabul Bank, airline owner and World Series Poker Player, Sherkhan Farnood, looking so stressed? Would the DEA-led ‘money-hunters’ discover something so shocking it would threaten the country’s entire economy? A nation on the brink of financial collapse?
Would they find the biggest bank robbery ever recorded… and be ordered to ignore it?
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Chairman of the Kabul Bank,
Sherkan Farnood
Episode Eight coming in late 2023
Episode 9
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ISAF (NATO) Special Forces Commander, Mark Smethurst (Right)
Episode Nine coming in late 2023
Winning the Battles. Losing the War.
For much of the war, (most) military men and women avoided Counter-Narcotics like the plague. Targeting the poppy trade equalled instant enemies. But, a decade in, the insurgency was rampant regardless. Funded, at least in part, by poppies. Heroin was now on the hit-list.
ISAF (NATO) Special Forces Commander Mark Smethurst (Australian) teamed with the DEA to take down the Taliban’s drug trade. 900 tonnes of opiates were seized in the year 2012 alone. Hundreds of arrests were made, and a mountain of evidence gathered. Operation Reciprocity finally had its ‘smoking gun’…
But were the Taliban (among others) making even more by ‘stealing’ from the ‘Allied War Machine’? Was war more profitable, and more desirable, than drugs? And who would be the biggest losers if peace was finally found?
Episode 10
The Peacemakers of Afghanistan
With America deep into the ‘drawdown’, and the Taliban stronger than ever, DEA Boss Mike Marsac brings together his best people once more. Have they built a case to verify the Taliban is running a major international drug cartel? Can they prove, in a US Court, that its senior leadership are ‘Mafia’ bosses?
Special Investigator John Seaman presents 1000 pages of evidence. Yes, they can. US Department of Justice Attaché David Schwendiman agrees. But the Deputy US Ambassador in Kabul is livid. She reveals peace talks are soon to begin. Indicting the Taliban’s leaders will undermine everything.
That's when one of the most bitter battles of the war begins…
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David Schwendiman,
US Dept of Justice Attaché,
US Embassy, Kabul.
Episode Ten coming in late 2023