The Bartering Nation States: Are Afghanistan & Iran Bartering Gold For Oil?

“We are investigating it, and if we find this is a way of laundering money, we will intervene,” said Noorullah Delawari, the governor of Afghanistan’s central bank. “I don’t know where so much gold would come from, unless you can tell me something about it,” he said in an interview. Or, as a European official who tracks the Afghan economy put it, “new mysteries abound” as the war appears to be drawing to a close.

In Afghanistan, 90% of financial activity takes place outside of formal banks, except for written contracts. Receipts are rare and statistics inaccurate. Money laundering is a part of daily life.

As a result, with the gold, “right now you’re stuck in that situation we usually are: is there something bad going on here or is this just the Afghan way of commerce?” said a senior American official who tracks illicit financial networks, who clearly does not understand that the US mission was to undermine the Afghan way of life and thus commerce. To destroy the old ways of doing business and remake them in the vision of the global elite, so as to play their role in the play of superstates on the plates of kings.

The gold shipments are one part of an overlying lack of control by US officials in Afghanistan and the region, thus signalling the insanity of the overall Washington Consensus.  Cash smuggling is commonplace, as flights leave Kabul every day with thick wads of bank notes- dollars, euros, Norwegian kroner, Saudi Arabian riyal and other currencies. The notes are stuffed into suitcases, packed into boxes and shrink-wrapped onto pallets. At one juncture, cash was being smuggled via food trays aboard now-defunct Pamir Airways flights to Dubai.

In 2011, Afghanistan’s central bank claims about $4.5 billion in cash was transferred by air. “Afghanistan Reconstruction” has done nothing to bring in a culture of full spectrum dominance, and has only served to shed blood and torment.

The gold is likely being used for a wide array of monetary transactions, not the least of which being Iran possibly buying not only dollars and euros in Afghanistan so as to get around sanctions, but also perhaps gold bullion.

One dealer in Kabul said other gold traders were indeed buying gold for Iran in Afghanistan. Payment was being made in oil or with Iranian rials, which are accepted often in western Afghanistan. The Afghan dealers are taking the gold to Dubai, where the gold is sold for dollars. The money is sometimes then sent to China, where goods are purchased, or back to Iran.

Responsible for taxes on shipments, the Finance Ministry did not have figures. They said that the Commerce Industry would know, which did not.  Airport security forms covering the last two weeks of October indicate about 560 pounds or $14 million worth carried out of Afghanistan during that time period – all that in one of the world’s ten poorest countries.

2012-12-17 19:40:53

Source: http://silvervigilante.com/afghanistaniranbarteringgoldoil/