[world-vedic] Pak Army, Drugs and the CIA

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Pak Army, Drugs and the CIA By Abid Ullah Jan "We are facing.....the

neo-narco-colonialism of the new world order."

(NOTE: This article was written before Nawaz Sharif's Govt was

overthrown and may shed some light on the US involvement in Pakistan's

current Anti-India activities.)

The days of the balloon as an effective delivery vehicle in CIA's

propaganda operations have long since passed. The propaganda game has

now been evolved into a subtle contest of wits and the agency's Covert

Action staff has developed far more sophisticated methods for spreading

ideological messages through some selective journalists, who feel proud

to twist information on specific subjects for furthering their careers

and contributing to the propaganda objectives of the United States

government with a special slant.

This is not the first time that The News ran a CIA propaganda

piece. Such occasional contributions by the sellouts are being made

from time to time. The report that appeared under the name of Kamran

Khan in April 4, 1999 edition of The News is duplication of a same

piece that appeared in one of its October 1994 issues. Whether or not

"Nawaz Sharif was presented with a plan by the top military officials

to trade drugs on large scale to fund covert military operation," some

of our so-called reporters and analysts have no justification,

whatsoever, to take a few individual instances of drug trafficking by

few opportunist army or air force officers, put the blame squarely on

shoulders of the armed forces, and tell the public that Pakistan army

from top to bottom is following drug trafficking as a matter of

official policy.

The recent attempt is in continuation of the articles and some special

reports that appeared after the Nawaz-Washington Post 1994 controversy

in a bid to establish the involvement of Pakistan army in drug

trafficking. Such cheap tactics have, however, added only a false aura

of respectability and authority to the information the CIA is

interested in seeing spread __ even if that information is perfectly

accurate because they are by definition restricted from presenting an

objective analysis of the subject of American "Drug War" and Pakistan's

involvement in drug trafficking.

If North Vietnamese astrologers could be hired by the CIA to write

false predictions about the coming disasters which would befall certain

Vietnam leaders and the success and unity which awaited the South; if a

number of papers, magazines and publishing houses, ranging from East

European emigre' organs to such reputable firms as Frederick A Praeger

of New York __ which admitted to having published many books for the

CIA could be hired, purchasing a few Pakistani journalists to write

from the US point of view and discredit Pakistan army is not a big

deal. The hoax of a "Drug War" gives the US government not only an

authority to be a self-appointed cop to intervene in other sovereign

states, but also keeps the police state in the US on firm footing by

incarcerating more than 440,000 prisoners in local jails, 840,000 in

state, almost 120,000 in Federal prisons (along with 2.7 million people

on probation and more than 500,000 on parole) with more than half of

these on drug charges. Most absurd is the fact that in the name of

"Drug War", paramilitary can raid houses, detain citizen at gunpoint

and forfeit property worth millions of dollars to police department. In

Pakistan we have seen effectiveness of this weapon in recent events of

taming the opposition and chaining the press.

It is easy to write without any confirmation and substantial evidence

that PAF planes were used in drug running operations, Pakistan Army

traded heroin for guns, and ISI was deeply involved in organising drug

trade and purchasing arms for Sikh militants etc; but, its certainly

hard for such writers to mention exactly as to who says so? Merely a

repetition of "knowledgeable sources," and "they say" is not good

enough to substantiate the allegations that are so closely and

seriously linked to our national interest. It's not difficult to

comprehend who could be "they" when such writers conclude their

writings with one or two paragraphs from the CIA reports to give some

authenticity to their propaganda.

It has been confirmed that there were no heroin factories in Pakistan

before 1979 and "in 1980," says Harold D Wankel, DEA Assistant

Administrator of Operations, "there were no heroin addicts in

Pakistan." Who brought this manufacturing spillover, which made more

than one million addicts in a country with about half the population of

United States? Of course, no one but the CIA. The CIA-drug relation

started way back in late 1960s, when we had not even heard of cocaine

and heroin, let alone dealing them for guns by our army. According to

Victor Marchetti, a veteran of 14 years with the CIA __ where he rose

to be executive assistant to the Deputy Director of CIA __ in 1967,

"one officer was assigned to travel all over Latin America, buying all

sorts of hallucinatory drugs which might have some application to

intelligence activities and operations." That was the point when CIA

first got involved with the drugs, and thought of using it for running

its operations. John D Marks, who worked as an analyst and US State Department

Intelligence Expert for many years, wrote how the CIA was involved in

narcotics traffic for its benefit as early as the Vietnam War. In

Vietnam he wrote, "the CIA hoped to defeat the Pathet Lao and North

Vietnamese; for that purpose, it was willing to supply guns, money and

training to the Meo tribe... The CIA was willing to overlook the fact

that the Meo's primary cash crop was opium and that they continued to

sell the drugs during their 'secret' war," for the US against

communists.

When planes of the CIA proprietary airline, Air America could be used

to carry opium for Meos and the US highest military officers supported

by the Agency could be the kingpins of the drugs trade __ as explained

in "CIA and the Cult of Intelligence," how can we believe that the CIA

didn't suggest to cook opium, make heroin, sell it in their US market

and buy guns for the Afghan Mujahideen to fight and turn Afghanistan

into a Soviet Vietnam.

It is the CIA, not our armed forces, that is trafficking dope and its

clandestine personnel are using this trade, as they have used almost

every other criminal activity known to man, as a matter of official

policy. In 1986, soon after dictator Jean-Claude was overthrown, the

CIA created a unit (SIN) within Haitian army for fighting cocaine trade

__ like the ANF in Pakistan. As usual, the SIN quickly became the

biggest drug-dealing operations under the auspices of the CIA in the

Caribbean region. This is not the case with our armed forces but our

agencies created for fighting drug trafficking have certainly been

corrupted and used by the government and the US to an unimaginable

extent. It needs a Herculean effort to expose the fact that the amount

of drugs smuggled to the US by the private traffickers is at the most

one tenth of the total drugs trafficked by the agents __ like Ayyaz

Baluch __ of CIA, DEA, ANF and other agencies in Pakistan and other

countries. According to San Diego Union-Tribune, August 13, 1996,

Celerino Castelo __ a former DEA agent __ stated that together with 3

other ex-DEA agents, they were willing to testify in Congress regarding

their direct knowledge of CIA involvement in international drug

trafficking. Castillo estimates that approximately 75% of narcotics

entered the US with the acquiescence or direct participation of US and

foreign CIA agents.

Since 1960s, the CIA funded most of its covert operations __ like the

one for shutting down BCCI __ with drug money, earned by organised

selling of drugs in American streets, to its own people for money. So,

the "Drug War" is in fact a war for money and market. It is a war for

more dominance, not a war on drugs by any means. Maligning our armed

forces is part of a bigger plot for more interference in our internal

set-up and affairs on the one hand and making the army subservient to

the civilian government of the American choice on the other.

Writers like Kamran Khan worry too much about our prime minister's

knowledge of our armed forces dealing in drugs but they take no pain to

inform the public about the US politicians and their agencies'

involvement with drug trade. In the second week of October 1994, at a

press conference even Bill Clinton momentarily took on a ghastly pallor

when queried by the stalwart of Washington press corps, Sara McClendon.

She claimed that the Bush administration and the CIA established an

operation in the early '80s to ship drugs into the US. She wanted to

know what Clinton knew about CIA's arms-drug shipments through Mena

airport in South Arkansas __ Clinton's home state. Clinton said he knew nothing.

Since it was a federal matter, "the state

really had next to nothing to do with it" said Clinton. "Everybody

who's ever looked into it knows it." Just two days later, Evans

Pritchard, Washington bureau chief for the Sunday Telegraph London

wrote that Clinton, like his predecessors, knew a good deal more about

drug-arms shipments in Mena and the CIA's involvement. He wrote in

October 9 issue of Sunday Telegraph that by that time Arkansas "was

close to becoming a narco-republic a sort of mini-Colombia, within the

borders of the United States." He further wrote that at that time in

Arkansas parties were given "at which cocaine would be served like

hors-d'oeuvres and sex was rampant." He claimed that some of these

revels are documented in police records, and that "Bill Clinton was in

frequent attendance."

It clearly shows that the "Drug War" is not an effort to stop the

unstoppable, but to dominate the market forces, its profits and to have

a good cover for intervention in other countries' internal affairs in

the name of war on drugs. In October 1996, Jack Blum (former special

counsel to the 1987 "Kerry" Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on

Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations) testified before the

October 1996 Senate Select Intelligence Committee on alleged CIA drug

trafficking in the 1980s, chaired by Senator Arlen Specter.

In his testimony, Blum said: "For criminal organisations, participating in covert operations offers

much more than money. They may get a voice in selecting the new

government. They may get a government that owes them for help in coming

to power. They may be able to use their connections with the United

States government to enhance their political power at home..."

Blum has said something quite significant here. The CIA functionally

gains influence and control in governments corrupted by

narco-trafficking. Politically, the CIA exerts influence by leveraging

narco-traffickers and corrupted politicians. It's fascinating that

Blum's description wouldn't be out of place in describing the Opium

Wars of the 19th century. From what Blum describes, it seems that

narco-colonialism is alive and well and residing centrally at CIA

headquarters at Langley, Virginia.

It has been observed that the agencies that get involved with the CIA

or the DEA get corrupted while cooperating to, what they call, "stop

drug trafficking." Unlike Pakistan, drug war aid in Colombia, for

example, is going directly to the military, which is really neck deep

in drug trafficking. The military uses drug aid for its own purposes

ranging from running death squads, managing atrocities, killing peasant

leaders, to massacring political leadership. When the US wants to move

in, it will have a cover to do it, and it has done it already at the

time of killing Escobar.

CIA's role in the game is to make partners for dealing drugs and

profiting together for some time and then to discredit and discard them

once the purpose is served. Haiti is the recent example where CIA was

in deep connection with the paramilitary group FRAPH and Warren

Christopher confirmed that Emanual Constant, head of FRAPH, and Michael

Francois, the Haitian police chief were on ClA's pay-roll. Drugs,

undoubtedly, was the common ground of understanding between them.

But the same is not true for Pakistan army. Unlike the CIA, the

Pakistan army has never trafficked in dope as a matter of official

policy. If some of our officers were involved in narcotics traffic for

their own gains, we cannot attribute their deeds to the whole defence

forces of Pakistan and say that the allegations that "a blue print for

drug trafficking was drawn by the army does have a ring of truth to

it." This is a ridiculous attempt to discredit our army.

The pointlessness of the "drug war" has now been confirmed, but the US

administration is still adamant on utilising it in different productive

ways. The recent attempt at maligning our armed forces is simply

directed to make the institution submissive to the government for

achieving other Washington-directed objectives. In the wake of such

disinformation campaigns by the US against our armed forces and our

government against its critics and political opponents, we have to be

in a state of continued alertness. We do not have to just glance at a

story in the papers and believe it, or just skip rapidly over the

unfamiliar rubble of falsification. We have to excavate the truth,

analyse and a compare and dissect the facts as the "Drug War"

propaganda and the alleged involvement of the army or some figures from

politics and press in drug running is not the last, but the least, we

are facing as a prelude to the neo-narco-colonialism of the new world

order.