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Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian,soc.culture.afghanistan,soc.culture.pakistan,alt.fan.jai-maharaj,hawaii.nortle,alt.activism,alt.conspiracy,alt.politics.clinton,talk.politics.clinton,alt.politics.usa.congress,alt.politics.usa.republican
Subject: AFGHANISTAN: CIA, Rebels and Drug-Trafficking
From: jai@mantra.com (Dr. Jai Maharaj)
Date: Sat, 28 Sep 1996 04:39:52 GMT
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/* Written 10:07 PM Jan 23, 1996 by bwitanek in
igc:justice.polabu */ Posted by Bob Witanek
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THE WAR NO ONE WANTS TO WIN
by W. E. Gutman
A Connecticut-based journalist W. E. Gutman is
currently on assignment in Latin America. PART 2 OF 3
Cocaine production, a virtual monopoly of Bolivia,
Colombia, and Peru in 1989, grew from 800 tons in 1989
to 2,000 tons in 1994. Today, all countries south of the
Rio Grande are lusting after drug profits.
Nor are nations of the former Soviet Union immune.
Having succumbed to political and economic gangrene,
they too compete for their share of a thriving
international market. The hottest new market for
cocaine is Russia, a country where the white powder has
become a nouveau riche status symbol. According to Joe
Parker, a U.S. Customs agent assigned to Interpol
headquarters in France, "much of the traffic is also
going through Eastern Europe and traveling into the West
by rail."
Despite the lofty rhetoric and a number of high
profile operations which helped net several drug
king;pins and large quantities of contraband, there
appears to be no political will to bring the drug war to
a victorious end. Powerful economic and geostrategic
interests get in the way.
In Western Europe, for example, the principal purveyor
of heroin (70 percent of the market) is Pakistan. When
former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif visited
France in 1992, then French President Francois
Mitterrand clamored against Pakistan's human rights
record; but he said nothing about the heroin flooding
the streets of Paris. French drug enforcement agents
have known all along that a number of Pakistani cabinet
members moonlighted as narcotraffickers. Why then stand
mute? Simple. Islamabad had ordered three French
submarines-a contract worth $470 million. France is also
selling Pakistan nuclear technology for "civilian use."
Burma, the nation that savagely quelled student
protests in 1988, is the world's most powerful
narcodictatorship and a main supplier- via France-of
opium and heroin destined for U.S. markets. Did France
boycott Burma? No. Instead, a French public company
named Total signed an oil contract with the Burmese.
Morocco is France's main supplier of hashish (60 percent
of the market). The French government has yet to issue a
formal complaint, even though King Hassan admitted two
years ago that cannabis fields in Morocco exceed 124,000
acres.
France is not alone. When it comes to fighting drugs
with words, the U.S. is the undisputed champion of
double talk. To help Nicaragua's Contras, the CIA and
Col. Oliver North not only covered the tracks of their
drug-running proteges, they also laid the drug pipeline
from Colombia to the U.S. The Kerry Commission has since
disclosed that Florida's Homestead Air Force Base had
been used as a transit point in the shipment of large
quantities of marijuana.
Last fall, Richard Horn, a DEA agent, filed suit
against top former State Dept. and CIA officers based in
Burma, contending that they acted to thwart his antidrug
mission in the Southeast Asian nation. Horn alleges that
he was lied to, electronically surveilled, and finally
kicked out of Burma-not by the Burmese traffickers he
was trying to nab but by U.S. officials who thought his
antidrug campaign should be played down in favor of
other diplomatic objectives, namely discrediting the
brutal and repressive regime in Burma. It is not the
first time the priorities of America.n agencies abroad
have been at loggerheads.
Support for a ragtag group of Afghan freedom fighters
also justified any means. After all, at the time the
Soviet Union was still our arch enemy. So the CIA
secretly funneled weapons to the Afghan rebels through
the intermediary of Pakistan's military. On their return
trips, supply trucks were brimming with opium which was
promptly processed into heroin in 200 "flying kitchens"-
clandestine labs hastily erected along the Pakistani-
Afghan border. The CIA reportedly knew but looked the
other way. Result? In 1979, just before the war,
Afghanistan had produced 200 tons of opium. A year
later, according to UN figures, production had exceeded
3,000 tons.
According to a confidential memo, the U.S Justice
Dept. has been probing widespread drug trafficking among
the now-deposed and "exiled" Haitian military.
Prosecutors have evidence that top officers protected
cocaine flights from Colombia and outgoing U.S.- bound
freighter shipments. Obtained from the Associated
Press, the memo also discloses serious concerns that
U.S. intelligence agencies may have cooperated with
Haitian smugglers, among them 14 high-ranking military
officers, including the chief of police of
Port-au-Prince, Haiti's superintendent of ports, and
several agents of Haiti's National Intelligence
Service-all said to be closely involved with Colombian
traffickers. U.S. benevolence-not to say
sycophancy-toward Haiti's drugsmeared (and
blood-stained) former military elite casts doubt on the
motives and the seriousness of last year's "invasion. "
Western nations also turn a blind eye to drug money
laundering. No wonder: The harvest is bountiful. Ninety
percent of the estimated $300 billion drug market is
reinvested in industrialized nations; the remainder goes
to drug-producing countries. Many large western banks
have branches in these fiscal paradises, notoriously fed
by narcodollars. These Edens, many of them in the West
Indies, owe their survival to their richer patrons. The
Cayman Islands, the ideal repository of dirty money, is
a British colony. If it really wanted to, the London
government could easily put an end to this operation,
not to mention other lucrative markets in the Bahamas,
Bermuda, the Jersey Islands, and Gibraltar, which are
also controlled by London. Narcodollars are also
routinely laundered in the quaint Dutch half of the tiny
island of St. Martin and in Curacao-a fishnet's throw
away from the Venezuela coast-while Amsterdam looks the
other way.
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End of forwarded article
The poster may or may not agree with all views expressed
above.
Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi jai@mantra.com jai@eskimo.com
%:%:%:%:%:%:%:%:%:%:%:%:%:%:%:%:%:%:%:% Om Shanti %:%:%
Dr. Jai Maharaj
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