Pak Army, Drugs and the CIA

[Guest guest]

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.